Christ Before Caiaphas, miniature on a leaf from a Book of Hours, in Latin [France, Brittany (Rennes), c.1430-40]

Illuminated manuscripts of high quality produced in Brittany are rare. This fine miniature was published by Prof. Eberhard König as the work of the MASTER OF WALTERS 221 (Französische Buchmalerei um 1450, 1982, p.120, fig.285). The artist, named after a fragmentary Book of Hours in the Walters Art Museum, Baltimore, was active in western France in the 1430s and 1440s. Four of the five manuscripts attributed to the illuminator are Books of Hours (see most recently the summary by D.E. Booton, Manuscripts … in Late Medieval Brittany, 2010, pp.53-58). The liturgical use of these manuscripts includes Rennes, Vannes, and Le Mans, and the Master of Walters 221 may have been an itinerant artist. A major centre of book illumination, however, was Rennes, a thriving city in Brittany that had been largely spared the ravages of the Hundred Years’ War. The work of the Master of Walters 221 shows the influence of the Master of Marguerite d’Orléans, an artist who came to Rennes to create his masterpiece, the Hours of Marguerite d’Orléans (Paris, BnF, lat. 1156B).

The present miniature with Christ before Caiaphas is remarkable for the subtle modelling of faces and drapery, and the suffused luminosity that fills the miniature with a glowing inner light. Three other miniatures from the same manuscript are known to have survived (Berès, Manuscrits & Enluminures, cat.66, c.1975, nos.8-10). The illustration of the Hours of the Virgin with a Passion Cycle rather than with the more common Life of the Virgin is characteristic of book illumination in Brittany in the second quarter of the 15th century. Christ before Caiaphas also occurs in the eponymous Walters manuscript (König 1982, fig.290), and the Master of Walters 221 used a similar model to that of the present miniature in a Book of Hours in Vienna (Cod.1910, König op.cit., fig.284).