Getty Finds a Lost "Lamentation"

Jean Bourdichon, Lamentation, 1498-99, from The Hours of Louis XII. Getty Museum

The Getty Museum has acquired a rediscovered leaf from the Hours of Louis XII, one of the great illustrated books of the French Renaissance. The full-page miniature is a Lamentation that would have faced Louis XII in Prayer, a royal portrait with saints that has been in the Getty collection since 2004. Both are by French court painter Jean Bourdichon (1457 or 1459—1521). With painted frames, the miniatures formed a two-page diptych at the front of the book. Each leaf is about 9-1/2 in. high. 

Jean Bourdichon, Lamentation and Louis XII of France Kneeling in Prayer, Accompanied by Saints Michael, Charlemagne, Louis, and Denis, 1498-99. Getty Museum

British Museum curator Janet Backhouse reconstructed the history of the Hours of Louis XII. Made for the  French king, it traveled to England and had been disassembled by about 1700 (when diarist Samuel Pepys owned a text page as a specimen of calligraphy). A group of text pages are now in the British Library, along with three full-page miniatures. In all 18 large miniatures, all by Bourdichon, are known. The Free Library of Philadelphia has four calendar pages. Single leaves are held by the Louvre, Victoria & Albert Museum, and other French and British institutions. With the Lamentation, the Getty now has four leaves, the most important set anywhere.

Jean Bourdichon, Bathsheba Bathing, 1498-99, from The Hours of Louis XII. Getty Museum

The last two miniatures in the book—though not facing each other—would have been a sensuous Bathsheba and a cringy Job. Bourdichon's close-up figures have a cinematic frankness remarkable for the time.

Jean Bourdichon, Job on the Dung Heap, 1498-99, from The Hours of Louis XII. British Library

In 2005-2006 the known miniatures were reunited for an exhibition at the Getty and Victoria & Albert. It was then believed that a Virgin and Child had faced the Getty leaf of Louis XII in Prayer. This was based on German art historian Gustav Waagen's 1835 visit to the home of British novelist and collector William Beckford. Waagen recalled seeing

"On two leaves of parchment, the Virgin and Child, with persons worshipping them. French miniatures, of the greatest delicacy, of about the same period as the prayer-book of Anne of Bretagne—that is, about 1500—and not inferior."

It's now theorized that Waagen's recollection was confused, and he must have seen the Lamentation. Though Waagen thought the leaves were by Jean Fouquet (Bourdichon's teacher), he rightly connects them to the prayer-book (Grande Heures) of Anne of Brittany. This is Bourdichon's greatest work. Still intact, it opens with a very similar diptych of a Lamentation and Anne of Brittany in Prayer. 

Jean Bourdichon, Lamentation with Anne of Brittany in Prayer Presented by Saints Anne, Ursula, and Helena, from the Grand Heures of Anne of Brittany, 1503-8. Bibliothèque national de France, Paris

The surviving leaves of the Hours of Louis XII have text on the reverse—except for the Lamentation and Louis XII in Prayer, which are blank on the other side. That is consistent with the idea that they were together at the front of the book, before the calendar.

The Louis XII Lamentation was auctioned in Rouen in Jan. 2018. Catalogued as "French School, 19th century," it failed to sell. The auctioneers tried again a month later, and the leaf sold to Les Elumineurs, Chicago-based manuscript dealers. They researched the miniature, and it was published as the missing Bourdichon by University of Pennsylvania manuscript scholar Nicholas Herman in 2021. The Getty purchased it from Les Elumineurs.

Detail of Lamentation