We will likely never know whether Simon Bening had a pet dog, or whether he thought to incorporate him into his manuscript illuminations if he did. Right: Detail of dog in The Author in His Study, about 1530–40, Simon Bening Photo courtesy of and © Laura Nicholson, lnphotography.ca. Dogs in medieval illuminations often have a symbolic meaning, usually relating to the theme of loyalty, but in Bening’s works, they seem to pop up everywhere, mostly without a distinct symbolic function. There is no lack of confirmation that Bening liked dogs in general. I’m a dog lover myself, and so I couldn’t help noticing during the course of my research that this particular dog kept cropping up in Bening’s late work, which provided additional evidence that the image was by Bening. And curled up in the perfect warm patch of sunlight is a fluffy dog with his head resting on his paws. The monkey is less than two millimeters tall.Īnother hallmark of Bening’s work is the way that light plays a major role in the image, spilling across the desk and the floor. Under extreme magnification, it becomes evident that the blue blob is actually a tiny monkey dressed in a monk’s habit with a delicate cable chaining him to the wall behind. In the outdoor courtyard with the waiting horse, a tiny blue blob is just visible atop a red hitching rail used to tether horses. In addition, even the tiniest of details is given artistic attention of the highest order. I found abundant close comparisons for the seated figure, the conception of the room’s interior, and the way in which the surfaces of objects were painstakingly evoked.ĭetail of monkey in The Author in His Study, about 1530–40, Simon Bening Since the Lalaing manuscript had received almost no scholarly attention, my job was to find stylistic and compositional links to the known manuscripts by Bening. Bening was the favored artist of patrons across Europe, famed for his poetic landscapes, stolid figures, psychological subtlety, and fleck-like brushwork (his work was highlighted in the 2003 exhibition Illuminating the Renaissance). It is almost certain that this illumination was painted by Simon Bening, the most celebrated manuscript artist of the 16th century. The book begins with a monumental frontispiece of the text’s author at his desk hard at work. The manuscript had resided in a private collection for hundreds of years, and was only known through black-and-white photos of a publication dating from 1914 ( learn more about the manuscript and its origins). Because I’ve made a scholarly specialty of Flemish illumination of the 16th century, the date and locale of this manuscript, I was responsible for the research in preparation for the manuscript’s acquisition. The Getty recently acquired a magnificent copy of the Book of Deeds of Jacques de Lalaing, essentially a biography of the greatest knight of the late Middle Ages.
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