Scuffed, scratched and even stained in places, the unpromising exterior of one of the Louvre Abu Dhabi’s latest acquisitions is proof positive that, when it comes to the quality of books, covers really are an unreliable guide.
Decorated with nothing more than an embossed pattern of lozenges and barely decipherable fleurs-de-lis, the volume’s brown leather binding offers no clue to the illuminated riches that lie inside.
The text is a late 15th century Book of Hours, a devotional text made specially for the use of a private and very wealthy individual and organised according to a religious calendar defined by saint's days, religious holidays and time-appropriate prayers.
The Louvre Abu Dhabi’s example, written and painted in a Bruges workshop some time between 1450 and 1475, is composed of 138 parchment pages, or folios, and 47 miniatures, one of which features a mounted and haloed knight dispatching a wounded and writhing dragon in a manner commonly associated with Saint George.
The illumination is wonderfully detailed. As the knight delivers the coup de grace a maiden plays with a small white dog in the middle ground, seemingly oblivious to the drama unfolding before her, while two figures look on from the bridge and turret of a nearby town.
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From the illuminator’s choice of palette – the town’s walls are finished in a warm, teracotta colour and the trunks of the trees, like the saint’s halo and armour, are picked out in real gold – it would appear that the battle is taking place in the late afternoon and judging by her brilliant lapis lazuli-coloured dress and small golden crown, the maid might very well be the Virgin Mary.
The choice of England’s patron saint as a subject is telling because that is where the book was destined when it left the workshop of Willem Vrelant, one of the most prolific and commercially successful illuminators working in Bruges between 1450 and 1475.
The book's importance stems, in part, from its provenance but also from its rarity. The Louvre Abu Dhabi's volume is one of only 250 Flemish Book of Hours sent to England between 1390 and 1520 to have survived the Reformation, an iconoclastic event that led to the destruction of many of England's finest works of mediaeval art.
Added to this is the fact that the manuscript is also one of the very few to have escaped Henry VIII and Thomas Cromwell's reforms complete. The volume's subtitle, Use of Sarum, refers to the fact the the book still contains an illumination of the murder of Thomas Becket, the English archbishop who was worshipped as a saint after his assassination in Canterbury cathedral in 1170, many illustrations of which were destroyed during the dissolution of the monasteries.
As with the other recent acquisitions announced by the Louvre Abu Dhabi team, which include an ancient Egyptian funerary set, a pair of 17th century Japanese screens, a 15th century Ottoman helmet and a painting by the 20th century Cuban Surrealist artist Wilfredo Lam, the Book of Hours sheds light on the art historical stories the Louvre Abu Dhabi will tell and the way its galleries will be organised.
“This book proves there was interest in reading practice at a time commonly regarded as boorish and illiterate,” explains Jean-Francois Charnier, the scientific director of Agence France-Muséums, the body charged with establishing the Louvre Abu Dhabi and its collections alongside Abu Dhabi’s Tourism and Culture Authority (TCA).
Along with other luxury objects from the Louvre Abu Dhabi’s permanent collection and loans from the French national museum of the Middle Ages, the Musee du Cluny, the book will be presented in a gallery dedicated to courtly art in mediaeval Europe.
Like the book, which is believed to have been made for a very senior member of the English clergy, the ancient Egyptian funeral set acquired by the museum is also an object that was made for the very wealthiest sector of society but unlike the book, we know exactly who it was made for.
Princess Henuttawy, called “the venerated house mistress” on her mummy case and sarcophagii, was the daughter of a pharaoh from the 22nd dynasty, King Sheshonk, ‘Lord of the Two Lands’, which dates her funeral set to the second half of the 10th century BCE.
Made from painted wood, linen, papyrus and plaster, the set includes her body, preserved in a cocoon, which is protected by a richly decorated cartonnage case and three wooden sarcophagi, two of which are well-preserved while a third contains only fragments.
Part, in thanks, to its remarkable state of preservation, Mr Charnier expects the funerary set to be one of the centrepieces of the Louvre Abu Dhabi’s presentation of ancient Egyptian artworks, which include a three-metre-long, hieroglyph-covered mummy bandage, a carved and inscribed stone that once formed the apex of a pyramid, and a bronze statuette of the god Osiris.
“The great care and attention given to the delicate features of the princess’s face and her ‘living’ eyes still watching us across the millennia remind us of the identity of the deceased person, who was a Pharaoh’s daughter,” the curator explains.
Of the other acquisitions, two in particular allow the museum’s curators to explore the Louvre Abu Dhabi’s particular focus, moments of interaction between cultures and the influence this has on art.
One such encounter was between Portuguese and Dutch merchants and missionaries in the 17th century, and the art and culture of the Japanese, who referred to the Europeans as namban, or ‘southern barbarians’.
The word now refers to objects from the period that either feature Europeans or combine western iconography with traditional Japanese materials and techniques, as is the case with the pair of screens acquired by the Louvre Abu Dhabi.
Painted around 1690 using bright pigment and gold on a deep indigo background, these rare and elegant objects are linked to a school that was established by Italian Jesuits.
Inspired by a map drawn by the Dutch geographer Petrus Plancius in the early 1600s, one screen depicts the world complete with European galleons plying their trade in the Bay of Bengal and South China sea while the other features an older form of Japanese map known as Gyoki that lists Japan’s 66 provinces along with their estimated rice harvest, a measure that formed the basis of Japanese taxation in the 17th century.
“This pair of Japanese screens reinforces the existing collection of Louvre Abu Dhabi on the so-called ‘Namban’ theme, based on encounters and exchanges between East and West,” Mr Charnier writes, via email, from Paris.
“Moreover, this map of the world features the rather precisely represented location of Abu Dhabi, which would make it the most ancient representation of Abu Dhabi in the collection of the museum.”
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Ostensibly, nothing could be more different from the Louvre Abu Dhabi’s Japanese screens than Lam’s 1945 painting Caribbean Parade, but when they are subjected to the new museum’s overarching curatorial lens, certain thematic similarities come into focus.
Born in Cuba in 1902, Lam had been studying and practising art in Europe since the 1920s, which is where the young Wifredo, whose father was Cantonese Chinese and whose mother was part-Hispanic and part-African, met Picasso, Matisse and the poet Andre Breton, one of the founders of Surrealism.
Heavily influenced by his European experience, Lam’s early work betrayed his debt to Picasso. When he was forced to return to Cuba during the Second World War, his paintings combined the influence of European Primitivism and Surrealism with non-western elements such as Afro-Cuban Santeria, a form of spiritualism that grew out of the Cuban slave trade and Haitian vodoo.
"Because his work was fundamentally multicultural, influenced by the most avant-garde works of his time – Picasso's late Cubism, European Primitivism and Surrealism – as well as Afro-Cuban culture, Lam is an ideal artist for a museum like Louvre Abu Dhabi that is questioning universalism in a time of globalisation," Mr Charnier said of Caribbean Parade, which will be exhibited alongside works from the museum's collection and loans from Centre Pompidou.
Reflecting on the latest acquistions, the chairman of TCA, Mohammed Al Mubarak, issued the following statement.
“As a universal museum that offers new perspectives on artworks and artefacts from across the globe, we are pleased to announce new acquisitions that will enrich the museum’s strong, still-growing collection of works,” he wrote, emphasising the museum’s core message of cross-cultural dialogue and exchange.
“Together, these works, which originate from different civilisations, will help bring to life the long story of humankind, from pre-history up to the contemporary.”
Since the opening of Birth of a Museum at Manarat Al Saadiyat in April 2013, more than 150 artworks have been acquired the Louvre Abu Dhabi’s acquisition committee, bringing the museum’s permanent collection to around 600 objects.
nleech@thenational.ae
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Louvre Abu Dhabi: Full coverage
■ Museum in the making: Louvre Abu Dhabi through the years
■ Timelapse: A museum on the sea
■ The Collection: More than a master collection
■ Installations: Contemporary art
■ Experiences: Carving out new attractions
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