The Visconti Book of Hours

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hat is commonly known under the name Offiziolo Visconti (or Libro d‘Ore Visconti) is a manuscript actually divided into two separate volumes. They are in the Biblioteca Nazionale, Florence, under the cataloguing numbers [B]anco [R]ari 397 and [L]andau [F]inaly 22.

It is an exceptionally rich Book of Hours. It was illuminated by two quite different artists. Giovannino dei Grassi and his workshop painted the first folios for Giangaleazzo Visconti, despot of Milan. Giangaleazzo‘s death in 1402 interrupted the lagging work, and it was resumed by Belbello da Pavia for Giangaleazzo‘s son, Filippo Maria, after he became Duke in 1412.

Giangaleazzo Visconti was the most ambitious and probably the cleverest member of a powerful family. The Visconti, who liked to trace their descent from Venus and Anchises, ruled Milan for more than a century. Giangaleazzo, born in 1351, married no less a person than Isabelle, daughter of King John of France. Their daughter Valentina became the wife of Louis d‘Orléans, younger brother of King Charles VI of France, so that Giangaleazzo was doubly linked with the French royal family. French literature and French art were highly esteemed at his court.

Giangaleazzo became the sole ruler of the County of Milan in 1385 only by disposing of his uncle, Bernabö, who was also his second wife‘s father. He launched a campaign of territorial expansion that brought all Lornbardy and Emilia under his rule, and carried his power to the gates of Florence. He cultivated the favour of the German Emperor, and in 1395 Wenceslaus granted him an honour and privilege denied to all his predecessors: his deputy crowned him Duke and hereditary ruler of Milan. Since the text of the Book of Hours refers to Giangaleazzo as Count it was definitely written before the coronation of 1395. Furthermore, the imperial eagle that he henceforth proudly displayed does not appear among his emblems, so most if not all the illumination accomplished for him must antedate 1395 also.

His concern for the acceptance of his authority led him quite naturally to display his heraldic devices and mottoes on all occasions. They abound even in his prayer book made primarily for private use. These armorials often radiate light as dazzling as the symbols of God and the saints. In addition to the armorials Giangaleazzo himself is represented three times. Unlike another contemporary prince, the Duke of Berry, who also enjoyed seeing himself portrayed in his Book of Hours, Giangaleazzo does not appear in prayer before the Virgin or a saint. His head alone is depicted in a medallion unrelated to the religious scenes, though on BR 105 he does seem to be looking across to the Annunciation on the facing page.

Though during his rather brief period of rule from 1385 to his death in 1402 Giangaleazzo devoted himself primarily to the expansion of his political power, he found time for other occupations as hunting wild animals, some of which are depicted on the pages of his prayer book. Not inappropriately his profile head on folio 115 is framed by a hunting dog and a stag. Trained birds of pray populate the borders. The illuminator, catching the spirit, envisaged even the psalmist David as a hunter.

In addition to hunting and war Giangaleazzo undertook enterprises with more durable results. He built, or rebuilt, several castles, and he supported the construction of the enormous Cathedral of Milan. In 1396 the Duke laid the cornerstone for the famous Certosa di Pavia.

Like other tyrants in Ferrara, Mantua and Urbino, Giangaleazzo patronised learning and the arts. He look an interest in the University of Pavia, which his father had founded, and he continued to build the great library at Pavia that his predecessor had begun. Indeed, in the late fourteenth century, he made this city and Milan major European centres for the production of illuminated manuscripts. By giving special attention to this art he followed in the footsteps of his relatives, the Valois princes in France, the greatest of all patrons and collectors of illuminated books. From the Limbered workshops carne a distinctive and indeed unique series of splendid illustrated books devoted to plants, animals, medicine, and climate.

Giovannino dei Grassi fully shared this delight in nature. He filled his borders and occasionally his initials with animals and birds, all of them attentively studied and affectionately rendered. Many of them, such as deer, rabbits, dogs, cranes, hoopoe, are native. Giangaleazzo‘s zoo no doubt sheltered others - cheetahs, lions, peacocks and parakeets. The illuminator very skilfully portrayed also butterflies, flies and beetles, and occasionally flowers, such as the white daisies on BR 128.

In all this Giovannino dei Grassi was influenced by the Lombard intellectual milieu, but before him the depiction of fauna and flora had progressed in secular rather than in religious books. He himself did not of course achieve such extraordinary results for the first time and all at once on the pages of the Visconti Hours. He had been studying animals for years, and he carefully recorded the sum of his observations on parchment in a little book of models that by good luck still survives in Begrime (See the volume "The Model Book of Giovannino de Grassi" in this catalogue). Some of the creatures drawn by him in this book (lesser artists added a number) appear likewise in the Visconti Hours.

Although the scribe who wrote the text of the prayer book signed his name, Frater Amadeus, the illuminators are, as usual at this time, silent about their identity, and only other evidence tells us that it was the imagination of Giovannino dei Grassi to which we owe the designs of the first part of this manuscript. This master was first mentioned in 1389, as a painter in the workshops of the Cathedral. In 1391 the records show he exercised a general authority as “capomaestro“, and he is also qualified as a sculptor. A large relief in the Cathedral representing the Noli me tangere, made at this time, has often been attributed to at least his design. It seems, however, so stiff and dry that I question whether the artist responsible for the other objects more firmly connected with Giovannino can have provided anything but a preliminary drawing. In 1395 Giovannino was designing capitals for the Cathedral, and he employed as assistant his brother Porrone. One of the few excellent pages in the pattern-book in Bergarno, to which we have referred, bears a very old inscription attesting the authorship of Giovannino dei Grassi, and historians agree that this draftsman must be the author of the best folios in the Visconti Hours. Such a conclusion is confirmed by the one other fact we possess. In 1396 the Works of the Cathedral commissioned a Breviary, and in August 1398 payments for the illumination were made to the survivor of the illuminators, Salomone dei Grassi, Giovannino‘s son. Giovannino himself, the record states, had died July 6.

Our inference about chronology, with which not all specialists would agree, is that the latest work of Giovannino and his associates in the Visconti Hours should be dated in the nineties, probably but not certainly before 1395, when Giangaleazzo was crowned duke. At that time the huge enterprise was proceeding slowly if at all because of Giovannino‘s commitments to the Cathedral. It was then abandoned because he died in 1398 and Giangaleazzo followed him to the grave in 1402. The manuscript, its illumination only about half-complete, lay about until Duke Filippo Maria later asked Belbello da Pavia to finish it.

The name of Belbello is mentioned in correspondence of the Gonzaga family as the author of part of the illumination of a Missal completed by a follower of Andrea Mantegna (Gerolarno da Cremona) for Barbara Gonzaga, Marchioness of Mantua. In 1912, Pietro Toesca recognised him as the illuminator of all but one of the miniatures in the d‘Este Bible (See the volume "The Bible of Borso d'Este" in this catalogue), illuminated for Niccolö III, Marquis of Ferrara (Vatican Library, Barb. Lat. 613), and of the Book of Hours Visconti.

Although the date and the place of Belbello‘s death, like the date of his birth, are unknown, his documented relationship with the Gonzaga family seems to have begun rather late in his career, in 1448, at least fifteen years after his work on the d‘Este Bible.

Most scholars have agreed with Toesca that Belbello‘s contribution to the Visconti Hours is stylistically earlier than his illumination of the Bible. How much earlier, however, remains uncertain. Inasmuch as the initials F. M. D. M. (probably an abbreviation of Filippo Maria Dux Mediolani) and the ducal coat of arms appear on LF 72, it may be assumed that the portion of the Visconti Hours decorated for Filippo Maria was painted after his accession to the title of Duke in 1412, at the age of twenty, following the assassination of his older brother Giovanni Maria. The portrait of Filippo Maria on LF 57v, though more youthful than his likeness on the Pisanello medal of about 1441, might represent him in his twenties or thirties, and therefore may have been painted at any time between 1412 and the early 1430‘s.

Much of Belbello‘s painting in the Visconti Hours clearly stands near the beginning of his stylistic development, which evolves from a compact, detailed, and sometimes gem-like mode to the broader and chromatically more strident vocabulary of the Mantua Missal and some of the single leaves that have been attributed to him as late works.

Similarities of ornament, landscape, colour, and modelling suggest that the Hours are not much earlier than the Bible. Lack of homogeneity in the style of the miniatures of the Visconti Hours itself, however, raises questions concerning not only the exact date but also the precise nature of Belbello‘s contribution.

The facsimile is presented in two volumes: The Banco Rari is 151 leaves, trimmed, sized 247 x 175 mm and the Landau Finaly is 167 leaves, trimmed, sized 250 x 179 mm.

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