The Art of Illumination: The Limbourg Brothers and the Belles He

The Art of Illumination: The Limbourg Brothers and the Belles Heures of Jean de France, Duc de Berry
On view in the Robert Lehman Wing
The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York
March 2 - June 13, 2010

The Belles Heures (1405 - 1408/9) of Jean de Berry, a treasure of The Cloisters collection, is one of the most celebrated and lavishly illustrated manuscripts in this country. Because it is currently unbound, it is possible to exhibit all of its illuminated pages as individual leaves, a unique opportunity never to be repeated. The exhibition will elucidate the manuscript, its artists—the young Franco-Netherlandish Limbourg Brothers—and its patron, Jean de France, duc de Berry. A select group of precious objects from the same early fifteenth-century courtly milieu will place the manuscript in the context of the patronage of Jean de Berry and his royal family, the Valois.