By comparing the images in the borders to plants known to have grown in the Netherlands in the late Middle Ages, one can see that the Master did indeed choose his images from live models.
MEDIEVAL MANUSCRIPTS FLOWERS BOOK OF HOURS SERIES
By a series of comparisons one can see that these images are important to a complete understanding of the Cleves Hours. The Master’s breadth of choice and individual handling of the floral images in the borders of the Cleves Hours often make these images difficult to recognize and to interpret today. Second, the relationship of border image to miniature enlarged the meaningful area of the page.
First, the relationship of the border image to the symbolism of the miniature reinforced the meaning of the miniature. Within the borders of the first two sets of hours, the Master further related these symbolic floral images to the imagery of the miniature.
Those taken from church iconography were changed to emphasize their meaning in ways that had not been seen before. Many of these images had not been seen in illumination before the Cleves Master. officinalis, Viola odorata, Pisum sativum, Physalis alkekengi, Calendula officinalis, Narcissus pseudonarcissus, Fragaria vesca, Convolvulus, Solanum dulcamara, Artemisia vulgaris, and Lunaria annus. More specifically, he used Rosa Gallica var. In the Hours of the Virgin and the Hours of the Cross, the Master used the rose, violet, pea, physalis, calendula, daffodil, strawberry, bindweed, nightshade, mugwort, and honesty in borders that relate to scenes of the life of the Virgin and the Passion of Christ. The influence of the tenets can be seen, then, in the Master’s 1) observation of plant forms, 2) interpretation of these forms, and 3) expression of them in forms that emphasized that symbolism. This exaggeration of certain parts of an otherwise realistic floral image is one of the clues demonstrating which images were used symbolically. The Master went farther in his imaginative exaggeration to emphasize symbolism in these common plants with their vernacular meaning. While the Master used the flowers of established church symbolism, he also used plant forms that he had taken from daily experience, using these plants to convey a vernacular, rather than a canonical symbolic meaning.
The third tenet is the value of expressing this personal understanding of God’s will in terms of daily common experience. I will structure this study of the Master’s use of floral symbolic imagery on three of the tenets of this philosophy.
The method the Master used to select and depict the realistic floral images in the borders of the Hours of the Virgin and the Hours of the Cross shows evidence of the influence of the Devotio Moderna, a vital philosophical movement in the Netherlands of the late Middle Ages having a strong influence on the culture within which the Master worked. These realistic floral images will be the focus of this paper. Of particular interest are the realistic flowers seen in the borders of the illuminations of the first quarter of the manuscript-the Hours of the Virgin and the Hours of the Cross. An understanding of the meaning of these floral border images is, however, important to a complete understanding of the manuscript. Equally inventive is his symbolic use of the floral images in these borders, yet little has been made of this subject. The Master’s remarkable originality in his choice and depiction of imagery in the borders of this manuscript has been the focus of much of the literature on the manuscript. Introduction: The Book of Hours of Catherine of Cleves, produced in the Netherlands in the early 15th century, is one of the most beautiful and complex manuscripts of the late Middle Ages. Master’s Thesis, Eastern Illinois University, 1987 Image and Meaning in the Floral Borders of the Hours of Catherine of Cleves
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