Leaf Excised from a Breviary of Charles the Bold and Margaret of York: The Martyrdom of Saint Denis (c. 1467–70): Art, History and Details

Leaf Excised from a Breviary of Charles the Bold and Margaret of York: The Martyrdom of Saint Denis (c. 1467–70) is in the Cleveland Museum of Art collection. The museum's creator attribution is Simon Marmion (French, 1420s-1489).

The work and its context

The museum's open-access catalogue describes the work:

Simon Marmion was one of the most esteemed miniaturists of his generation. He was praised by the poet Jean Lemaire de Belges as the "prince of illumination." Marmion was a member of a family of painters from Amiens and likely trained in his father’s workshop before establishing his own workshop in Valenciennes. During the course of his career, he received numerous commissions from the Burgundian court, then resident in the Netherlands. In addition to manuscript illuminations, his commissions included paintings, altarpieces, portraits, and decorations for court festivities. This miniature comes from a deluxe breviary commissioned by the third duke of Burgundy, Philip the Good (r. 1419–67), but completed after his death for his son and successor, Charles the Bold (r. 1467–77), and his wife, Margaret of York. It survives with a sister leaf representing the Holy Virgins, now in the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York. These two leaves are today the sole tangible remnants from a breviary that was well-documented in its time. It once contained 624 folios, 95 full-page miniatures, 12 calendar vignettes, and several thousand small initials and marginal decoration.

Object facts

• Title: Leaf Excised from a Breviary of Charles the Bold and Margaret of York: The Martyrdom of Saint Denis
• Date: c. 1467–70
• Creator attribution: Simon Marmion (French, 1420s-1489)
• Culture: France, Valenciennes
• Type: Manuscript
• Technique: tempera on vellum
• Dimensions: Sheet: 15.2 x 11.2 cm (6 x 4 7/16 in.); Framed: 44.5 x 34.3 cm (17 1/2 x 13 1/2 in.); Matted: 40.6 x 30.5 cm (16 x 12 in.)
• Collection: MED - Manuscript Illuminations
• Department: Medieval Art
• Accession number: 2005.55

Collection credit

John L. Severance Fund

Further reading listed by the museum

• Cleveland Museum of Art, and Holger A. Klein. Sacred Gifts and Worldly Treasures: Medieval Masterworks from the Cleveland Museum of Art. Cleveland, Ohio: Cleveland Museum of Art, 2007.
• Gertsman, Elina, and Stephen N. Fliegel. Collectors, Commissioners, Curators: Studies in Medieval Art for Stephen N. Fliegel. Berlin ; Boston : De Gruyter ; [Kalamazoo, Michigan] : Medieval Institute Publications, 2023.
• Fliegel, Stephen N., "A Masterpiece in Miniature", Cleveland Museum of Art. Cleveland Art: The Cleveland Museum of Art Members Magazine. Vol. 46 no. 10, December 2006

View the collection record

See the museum's photographs and full catalogue entry. Catalogue text is reproduced from the Cleveland Museum of Art's open-access data, with HTML formatting removed. This object and its supplied image are designated CC0.