CODART, Dutch and Flemish art in museums worldwide

From the museum website, 25 March 2009

On view will be all the illuminated pages of the Belles Heures painted by the Limbourg brothers in 1405–1408/09 for Jean de France, Duc de Berry. Works of art in other media acquired by the duke and other Valois princes in the opening decade of the 15th century will also be included.

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.