Peronet Lamy
Encyclopedia
Illuminated manuscript
An illuminated manuscript is a manuscript in which the text is supplemented by the addition of decoration, such as decorated initials, borders and miniature illustrations...
who spent his career in the employ of the House of Savoy
House of Savoy
The House of Savoy was formed in the early 11th century in the historical Savoy region. Through gradual expansion, it grew from ruling a small county in that region to eventually rule the Kingdom of Italy from 1861 until the end of World War II, king of Croatia and King of Armenia...
.
Lamy's birth place is hypothesised to be Saint-Claude
Saint-Claude, Jura
Saint-Claude is a commune in the Jura department in the Franche-Comté region in eastern France.The town was originally named Saint-Oyand after Saint Eugendus. However, when St...
in the Bresse
Bresse
Bresse is a former French province. It is located in the regions of Rhône-Alpes, Bourgogne, and Franche-Comté of eastern France. The geographical term Bresse has two meanings: Bresse bourguignonne , which is situated in the east of the department of Saône-et-Loire, and Bresse, which is located...
, a Savoyard region bordering France. There is no record of Lamy's birth, but his brother Jean was living in Saint-Claude in 1453.
Lamy's first appearance in the historical record is in Savoy in May 1432, when he added the marginalia
Marginalia
Marginalia are scribbles, comments, and illuminations in the margins of a book.- Biblical manuscripts :Biblical manuscripts have liturgical notes at the margin, for liturgical use. Numbers of texts' divisions are given at the margin...
to the Escorial Apocalypse, a project on which he worked until 1434. This manuscript for Amadeus VIII of Savoy (also antipope
Antipope
An antipope is a person who opposes a legitimately elected or sitting Pope and makes a significantly accepted competing claim to be the Pope, the Bishop of Rome and leader of the Roman Catholic Church. At times between the 3rd and mid-15th century, antipopes were typically those supported by a...
Felix V) had been illustrated by Jean Bapteur beginning in 1428. The records of payment indicate that Lamy illuminated not just the marginalia for all ninety-seven folios, but also all the initial
Initial
In a written or published work, an initial is a letter at the beginning of a work, a chapter, or a paragraph that is larger than the rest of the text. The word is derived from the Latin initialis, which means standing at the beginning...
s and "certain images". These four miniatures have been identified on folios 24v to 26r; they were painted after Bapteur had left the project, and Lamy had to work around his already existing illustrations.
From these miniatures it has been possible for art historians to characterise Lamy's work in terms of phases. In the miniatures, his early work, the figures are brightly coloured and softly outlined, although they have been compared unfavourably as "blander" than Bapteur's. His style is influenced heavily by Franco-Flemish art. Maxence Petit-Delchet calls him "franco-flamande" (Franco-Flemish), while Bapteur he labels "franco-italien" (Franco-Italian). In time Lamy's style grew darker and more angular.
Château
A château is a manor house or residence of the lord of the manor or a country house of nobility or gentry, with or without fortifications, originally—and still most frequently—in French-speaking regions...
at Thonon—the project which had taken Bapteur away from the Apocalypse. This is Lamy's only preserved or recorded non-manuscript work. For the rest of his life he was a miniaturist, but none of the manuscripts he worked on has been identified. In 1434, before he had even ceased work on the Apocalypse, Lamy illuminated a book of hours
Book of Hours
The book of hours was a devotional book popular in the later Middle Ages. It is the most common type of surviving medieval illuminated manuscript. Like every manuscript, each manuscript book of hours is unique in one way or another, but most contain a similar collection of texts, prayers and...
for Anne of Lusignan, giving it one hundred gold letters. In 1436 Lamy completed a Nativity scene
Nativity of Jesus in art
The Nativity of Jesus has been a major subject of Christian art since the 4th century. The artistic depictions of the Nativity or birth of Jesus, celebrated at Christmas, are based on the narratives in the Bible, in the Gospels of Matthew and Luke, and further elaborated by written, oral and...
for the frontispiece
Book frontispiece
A frontispiece is a decorative illustration facing a book's title page. The frontispiece is the verso opposite the recto title page. Elaborate engraved frontispieces were in frequent use, especially in Bibles and in scholarly books, and many are masterpieces of engraving...
of a Gospel book
Gospel Book
The Gospel Book, Evangelion, or Book of the Gospels is a codex or bound volume containing one or more of the four Gospels of the Christian New Testament...
commissioned by Pietro Donato
Pietro Donato
Pietro Donato was a Renaissance humanist and the Bishop of Padua . He was a noted bibliophile, epigraphist, collector, and patron of art....
; the rest of the illuminations in this work were done by Johannes de Monterchio. The identification of this work as Lamy's was first communicated to the Pierpont Morgan Library by Otto Pächt in 1943. While the bulk of the Gospel lectionary is in the Padua
Padua
Padua is a city and comune in the Veneto, northern Italy. It is the capital of the province of Padua and the economic and communications hub of the area. Padua's population is 212,500 . The city is sometimes included, with Venice and Treviso, in the Padua-Treviso-Venice Metropolitan Area, having...
n style, the frontispiece is distinctly un-Italian; it was once attributed to an Upper Rhenish
Upper Rhine
The Upper Rhine is the section of the Rhine in the Upper Rhine Plain between Basel, Switzerland and Bingen, Germany. The river is marked by Rhine-kilometers 170 to 529 ....
artist. Probably Lamy was hired by Donato while the latter was attending the Council of Basel. Donato hired Lamy again to work on the miniatures for his copy of the Codex Spirensis, an important Carolingian
Carolingian art
Carolingian art comes from the Frankish Empire in the period of roughly 120 years from about AD 780 to 900 — during the reign of Charlemagne and his immediate heirs — popularly known as the Carolingian Renaissance. The art was produced by and for the court circle and a group of...
compilation containing notably the Notitia Dignitatum
Notitia Dignitatum
The Notitia Dignitatum is a unique document of the Roman imperial chanceries. One of the very few surviving documents of Roman government, it details the administrative organisation of the eastern and western empires, listing several thousand offices from the imperial court down to the provincial...
and De rebus bellicis
De Rebus Bellicis
De rebus bellicis is a 4th or 5th century anonymous work about war machines used by the Roman army of the time. It was written after the death of Constantine I , and before the fall of the Western Roman Empire...
. The initials in this manuscript are by others. The miniatures are immensely useful to scholars as basically faithful reproductions of the originals, shedding much light on the late Roman army
Late Roman army
The Late Roman army is the term used to denote the military forces of the Roman Empire from the accession of Emperor Diocletian in 284 until the Empire's definitive division into Eastern and Western halves in 395. A few decades afterwards, the Western army disintegrated as the Western empire...
. The architectural illustrations in the Notitia appear influenced by the manuscript workshop of the French regent, John, Duke of Bedford
John of Lancaster, 1st Duke of Bedford
John of Lancaster, 1st Duke of Bedford, KG , also known as John Plantagenet, was the third surviving son of King Henry IV of England by Mary de Bohun, and acted as Regent of France for his nephew, King Henry VI....
. At least one of the illustrations, a view of Constantinople
Constantinople
Constantinople was the capital of the Roman, Eastern Roman, Byzantine, Latin, and Ottoman Empires. Throughout most of the Middle Ages, Constantinople was Europe's largest and wealthiest city.-Names:...
, appears to have been an addition of Peronet not found in the original. Peronet produced another copy of the Notitia (which was in Florence
Florence
Florence is the capital city of the Italian region of Tuscany and of the province of Florence. It is the most populous city in Tuscany, with approximately 370,000 inhabitants, expanding to over 1.5 million in the metropolitan area....
c.1443) wherein the miniatures are sylised and "modernised".
In 1440 Lamy made (or was paid for) an "ystoire de Nostre Dame et la premiere letter et la vignette entour" as part of a book of hours for Yolande of France, the young fiancée of the future Amadeus IX. His next major work as an unidentified psalter
Psalter
A psalter is a volume containing the Book of Psalms, often with other devotional material bound in as well, such as a liturgical calendar and litany of the Saints. Until the later medieval emergence of the book of hours, psalters were the books most widely owned by wealthy lay persons and were...
and then, in Novembre 1443, unspecified aucunes enlumineures, for which the Savoyard court paid him five gold ducat
Ducat
The ducat is a gold coin that was used as a trade coin throughout Europe before World War I. Its weight is 3.4909 grams of .986 gold, which is 0.1107 troy ounce, actual gold weight...
s. These illuminations have been identified as those of the Royal Missal, commissioned by Duke Louis
Louis, Duke of Savoy
Louis I was Duke of Savoy from 1440 until his death.-Life:...
and given to his father, Felix V. Peronet Lamy has also been identified with the master of the Champion des Dames, and with the creator of the Archives Missal, another missal for Felix V.
Lamy's work for Felix can be dated to before 1445, as financial troubles past that date would have precluded any more commissions. Lamy's final recorded work was on a breviary
Breviary
A breviary is a liturgical book of the Latin liturgical rites of the Catholic Church containing the public or canonical prayers, hymns, the Psalms, readings, and notations for everyday use, especially by bishops, priests, and deacons in the Divine Office...
for Duke Louis (c.1452). The Champion, written c.1441–2 by Martin Le Franc
Martin le Franc
Martin le Franc was a French poet of the late Middle Ages and early Renaissance.He was born in Normandy, and studied in Paris. He entered clerical orders, becoming an apostolic prothonotary, and later becoming secretary to both Antipope Felix V and Pope Nicholas V.He was named provost at Lausanne...
, contains the earliest known portrait of Philip the Bold
Philip the Bold
Philip the Bold , also Philip II, Duke of Burgundy , was the fourth and youngest son of King John II of France and his wife, Bonne of Luxembourg. By his marriage to Margaret III, Countess of Flanders, he also became Count Philip II of Flanders, Count Philip IV of Artois and Count-Palatine Philip IV...
.
External links
- "Peronet Lamy," Art Encyclopedia, The Concise Grove Dictionary of Art (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2002).
- Apocalipsis figurado de las duques de Saboya: Madrid, Escorial, Biblioteca Monasterio San Lorenzo, MS E., Vitrina 5, at the University of Arizona Library, Special Collections.