It is a once-in-a-lifetime experience: the chance to see one of the greatest -- and most fragile -- works of European art before your very eyes. The illustrated manuscript known as the Très Riches Heures du Duc de Berry contains images that have shaped our view of the late Middle Ages, but it's normally kept under lock and key at the Château de Chantilly, north of Paris. It's only been exhibited twice in the past century. Now newly restored, the glowing pages of Les Très Riches Heures du Duc de Berry are on show to the public for just a few months. "Approche, approche," the Duke of Berry's usher tells the visitors to the great man's table for the feast that will mark the start of the New Year. It's also your invitation to examine closely the illustration for January, one of the 12 months from the calendar in this Book of Hours -- a collection of prayers and other religious texts -- that form the centrepiece of this exhibition in Chantilly. It's su...
The first work you encounter by Dieric Bouts is a pretty gruesome one. It's a triptych depicting the martyrdom of St Erasmus. The saint lies tied to a board, looking remarkably stoic considering his intestines are being wound out of him by two men straining at a windlass. His bishop's mitre can be seen at the bottom left of the central panel. Four men oversee the torture, the central figure gorgeously attired in a fur-trimmed green-and-gold coat, his gaze directed to the incision in Erasmus's stomach. This frightful subject matter is beautifully laid out, precisely drawn and bursting with colour. Your average visitor to St Peter's Church in Leuven 550 years ago might not have been able to read, but in Bouts's painting they could take in the story of Erasmus in one powerful image. Thus begins Dieric Bouts: Creator of Images at M Leuven. Bouts lived and worked in this Flemish university city in the late 15th century, a generation or so behind those founding f...