Illuminated Throughout by the Master of Anne de Graville: His Principal Work
Missale ad consuetudinem insignis ecclesie Ebroicensis. Paris, Jean Kaerbriant and Didier Maheu for Jean Petit, 1527.
The only complete copy of the 1527 Missale for the use of the bishopric of Évreux, printed on vellum and illuminated throughout in gold and colours by the Master of Anne de Graville.
Among the surviving French liturgical books of the sixteenth century, few copies unite rarity, artistic quality, condition, and provenance at this level. Of the two recorded copies of the edition, the other, preserved at the Bibliothèque Sainte-Geneviève in Paris, is incomplete and printed on paper. The present copy alone is complete, printed on vellum, and illuminated throughout by one of the leading Parisian illuminators of the period.
Edition & Bibliographic Information
Folio (approximately 330 × 220 mm), printed in black and red with narrow marginal commentary columns and pale red ruling throughout. Printed on vellum.
Illustrated with a half-page printer’s device within a fully painted border on the title page, two full-page woodcuts, one half-page woodcut of the Mass of Saint Gregory within a painted border, twenty-one quarter-page woodcuts, and 128 smaller woodcuts, all illuminated contemporaneously in gold and colours by the Master of Anne de Graville. The volume further contains numerous illuminated initials in gold or blue on alternating rose and blue grounds, frequently heightened with gold or white ornament and occasionally with figural decoration.
Contemporary half pigskin binding over oak boards on six broad and two narrow raised bands, retaining the original vellum endleaves and gilt edges. Preserved in a modern half-morocco case.
The Master of Anne de Graville
The illumination places the volume among the major surviving monuments of Parisian Renaissance book painting.
The Master of Anne de Graville, only relatively recently defined as an artistic personality, belongs among the foremost illuminators active in Paris after 1500, alongside figures such as Jean Pichore and Etienne Colaud. In elegance of composition and refinement of colour, his work often surpasses even theirs.
The present Missal must be regarded as his principal surviving work.
Its more than 150 illuminated woodcuts were painted with extraordinary consistency and attention throughout. The larger compositions, especially the facing full-page images of the Crucifixion and God the Father enthroned, approach the level of independent manuscript miniatures rather than coloured printed illustrations. The palette is rich without heaviness: deep blues, luminous reds, liquid gold, and subtle tonal modelling animate the entire cycle.
Even the smaller scenes retain unusual liveliness and precision. The book rewards prolonged looking.
The Cathedral of Évreux
The Missal was produced for the cathedral of Notre-Dame at Évreux in Normandy.
An original inscription preserved on the final flyleaf records: “Raynaldus-viconte cantor ecclesie ebroicensis iussit hunc imprimi librum et ornari insignis figuris” — “Raynald Vicomte, cantor of the church of Évreux, ordered this book to be printed and adorned with remarkable images.”
This contemporary testimony is important because it identifies not only the commissioner, but specifically the intention behind the lavish illumination program itself.
Raynald Vicomte belonged to the Norman noble family Le Vicomte de Blangy and occupied the office of cantor, among the wealthiest and most influential dignitaries of the cathedral after the bishop. The inscription establishes the unusually close connection between the volume and the liturgical life of Évreux Cathedral.
Normandy and the Early Reformation
The Missal was produced during a period of growing religious instability in Normandy.
By 1527 reformist ideas had already begun to circulate in the region, and tensions intensified during the following decades. In 1540 Francis I attempted to establish an inquisitorial court at Évreux, but local resistance proved so strong that the institution was soon dissolved. From 1559 onward the city possessed an active Reformed church community that survived until the revocation of the Edict of Nantes in 1685.
None of this uncertainty is visible in the Missal itself.
The book represents instead a final moment of enormous confidence in the visual and ceremonial culture of late medieval Catholicism. Its scale, expense, and artistic ambition belong fully to the world of the great French Renaissance cathedral before the confessional fractures of the later sixteenth century transformed it permanently.
Provenance
Commissioned for Raynald Vicomte, cantor of Évreux Cathedral. Later in the possession of Jean-Paul-Gaston de Pins (1766–1850), bishop and apostolic administrator of Lyon. Subsequently in the collections of Arthur Brölemann, Lionel Robinson, H. P. Kraus, and other major bibliophilic collections of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries.
The copy achieved some of the highest prices of major twentieth-century manuscript and rare book sales, including £57,200 at the Lionel Robinson sale in 1986 and $325,000 in the H. P. Kraus catalogue of 1991.
Literature
Catalogue Brölemann, Lyon 1897, no. 146; Moreau 1527, no. 1278; Porée, Les anciens livres liturgiques du diocèse d’Évreux, pp. 26–27; Weale/Bohatta 367. Not in Adams or Van Praet.
For a fuller scholarly description and illustrations, see Wunderkammer Catalogue 90, number 24:
Wunderkammer Catalogue 90, Volume I
