MARMION, Simon

This codex contains a cosmology, developed from God’s seven-day creation and arranged accordingly on the basis of the prevailing view of the seven ages of the world. It is illustrated with 3 miniatures, and numerous foliate borders and initials.

The illustration on folio 1v shows Adam and Eve in the Paradise before a landscape reaching far into the distance. In the heavens, God the Father rules over a world that is filled with peace and tranquillity.

Marmion’s creative genius in panel paintings and miniatures unites in wondrous harmony French traditions with the Netherlandish Rogier van der Weyden’s depictions of people and the natural lyricism of Jan van Eyck.

This codex by Jean Mansel (1400-c.1473), a Burgundian author, contains a compilation of the history of the world from the Creation to the death of King Charles VI (1422) with historical events being incorporated into the biblical story of salvation and redemption. The probable patron of the manuscript was Philip the Good, Duke of Burgundy (reigned 1419-1467). The large number of extant copies (there are more than 50 manuscripts) indicates its popularity in the late Middle Ages.

The 65 miniatures were executed by Simon Marmion and other illuminators. The illustrations, each about two-thirds of a page in size and the two columns of text beneath them, are surrounded by wide borders. These are filled with delicate ornamental foliage and with filigree latticework.

This miniature on folio 388r shows individual scenes form the life of King Louis IX, Saint Louis of France. It demonstrates the artist’s heightened sense of balanced composition and harmonic coloration, and his predilection for a wealth of contemporary details.

This miniature is a detail from 375r depicting scenes form the life of King Louis IX, Saint Louis of France.

Simon Marmion of Amiens played a significant role in French painting in the mid-fifteenth century. The composition representing the life of St Bertin was formerly part of the altarpiece of the monastery of St Omer. In the left corner of the left shutter is the founder of the monastery, the Abbot Guillaume Fillastre, Bishop of Tours; beside him are scenes of the birth of the saint, his admission to the Benedictine Order, his arrival at Th�rouane as a pilgrim and the dedication and building of a new monastery. Marmion was not unaffected by northern influences; his painting is an expression of the realism set in motion by the Van Eyck brothers as it reached a small town in Northern France. Its formal and balanced harmony and its serene atmosphere make it an important item in the mediaeval legacy to the variegated ensemble of French painting.

The row of scenes making up the right shutter shows St Bertin miraculously separating wine from water in the same barrel, and the convert entering the monastery; the vow of four monks, the defeat of the Tempter, appearing in the form of a woman, and finally the saint’s death. The different scenes are divided from one another by arched pillars, and the care lavished on the details suggests a proficiency in the painting of miniatures. The small size of each scene nonetheless adds up to an impression of monumentality, serving the purpose of the painting which is the idealized presentation of the intimate and sublime episodes of the monk’s life.

Guillaume Philastre, Bishop of Toul and Abbot of St Omer, commissioned the artist in 1453 to paint the wings for an altar-shrine which he donated to the monastery church in 1459. Here this precious work remained until the French Revolution, when the shrine disappeared in the wave of iconoclasm, but the wings were saved.

As the altarpiece was destroyed, the original form it took remains uncertain. The central shrine appears to have been adorned with sculptures wrought in gold and silver. The two wings take the form of a predella, and the original outer surfaces (now at the back) are decorated with grisaille paintings. The artist’s major work, however, was the coloured ‘open’ side extending across both panels, and dedicated to the life of St Bertin, the founder and patron-saint of the monastery church. In two series of five scenes, which are separated by ingenious architectural vistas, the life of the Benedictine monk is depicted from his birth to his death, including his induction, the construction of the new monastery, his miracles and his temptations. In this devout narrative the donor of the panels himself was bound to appear. He had himself portrayed kneeling with a chaplain and clearly identifiable by his escutcheon.

The detail reproduced here shows several monks, who have gathered in the cloister under a statue representing Saint John the Baptist - to hear a sermon. In the background is an early Gothic cloister, around the walls of which is a continuous painted fresco representing a dance of death. In the far background a young man can be seen leaning against a pillar and admiring the frescoes.

With their subtle use of light and shade and the brilliance of their colours, these panels rank among the finest surviving examples of early French painting. Simon Marmion came from Amiens and from 1458 onwards worked in Valenciennes. In his use of colour and rendering of detail, he modelled himself on Jan van Eyck; the natural ease with which he tells his story and the miniature-like quality of his painting reveals a master of book-illustration. What is particularly surprising is the apparently effortless way in which he overcomes the spatial problem of the cloister, integrating a background which consists of two distinct architectonic elements. This is one of the few pictures from this period that manage to convey both the interior of a medieval cloister and its wall-paintings.

At the beginning of the nineteenth century the wings entered the collection of William II of Holland. They were eventually inherited by the Prince zu Wied, who sold them to the Berlin Gallery in 1905.

The detail shows the wine miracle of St Bertin.

This panel is a fragment of the shutters from the St Bertin altarpiece. The soul of St Bertin is called into the sky over the roof of the abbey church dedicated to him at Saint-Omer, France.

The diptych with the Virgin and the Man of Sorrows was probably copied at the end of the fifteenth century from a work attributed to the famous panel and miniature painter Simon Marmion of Valenciennes. It shows the same mannered, rather soft style we find in other paintings from northern France.