The Amazing Adventures of Archibald Esq.
The Art of the Chase
The 14th century French nobleman Gaston Phoebus declared that he “delighted all my days in three things. The one is arms, the next is love, and the other is hunting.” True to his humble houndish heart he added modestly that “There have been far better masters of the two former than I am.”
An expert hunter, Phoebus wrote the detailed manuscript “Le Livre de la Chasse.” Dedicated to his fellow sportsman Philip the Bold, the Duke of Burgundy, and later owned by King Ferdinand II and Queen Isabella, it became popular throughout Continental Europe and England and was widely translated under the title “Master of the Game.”
The Morgan Library & Museum’s copy of “Le Livre de la Chasse,” lavishly illuminated with 87 miniatures, is one of the two finest surviving examples. (The other is in the Bibliothèque Nationale de France.)
As part of a conservation effort, the Morgan’s copy has been temporarily unbound, affording viewers a rare opportunity to study the individual pages. Fifty leaves from Phoebus’s manuscript are on view in “Illuminating the Medieval Hunt” at the Morgan, along with other manuscripts and printed books from the 11th to the 16th century, in a show curated by William M. Voelkle, head of the department of medieval and Renaissance manuscripts.
Written between 1387 and 1388 and dedicated to Philip the Bold, duke of Burgundy — himself a high-ranking member of the royal family and a keen huntsman — the Book of the Hunt by Gaston Phoebus, Count of Foix, is divided into five parts that deal in turn with different types of game, the care and training of hounds, methods of hunting stags and other wild animals, and a closing section on traps and snares.
Except for a few passages excerpted from another hunting treatise written some years earlier by Henri de Ferrières, Gaston’s work is wholly original and based on the author’s personal experience. He displays an acute sense of observation in his description of various types of animal behavior. From the first, the book was probably meant to be illustrated.
The two oldest extant copies from Avignon include elaborate illustrations. An exceptionally beautiful manuscript of the book was produced early in the fifteenth century and illuminated under the direction of an artist related to the Bedford Master. At the end of the 15th century this manuscript belonged to the Saint-Vallier family of Poitiers, then turned up in the library of Louis XIV. The animal imagery in this manuscript is outstanding, vividly bringing to life the way hunting and related activities were practiced in the Middle Ages.
Phoebus’ work examines the characteristics of various wild animals, explores different methods of hunting and provides instruction on caring for hounds. It is laced with references to Phoebus’s other chief pastimes — making love and war. Grrwoof!
“Le Livre de la Chasse” was written for medieval aristocrats, but it will appeal to contemporary athletes, nature lovers and dog owners. The jewel-toned miniatures (by an unidentified illuminator) reveal the extraordinary effort, discipline, skill, timing and etiquette of the medieval hunt. For Phoebus and other noblemen hunting was a sport, an art and a game of chance. The hunt was also tied to religion. Hunts were coordinated with the calendar of feast days.
The stag season, for instance, began on the feast day of the discovery of the True Cross. At the Morgan, several illuminated books fuse hunting imagery with religious iconography. An example of this is an illustration of “The Miracle of St. Hubert” (Hours of Pierre de Bosredont, about 1465), where a crucifix appears between the antlers of a hunted stag.
The medieval hunt was an aristocratic diversion, similar to English fox hunting. It would normally begin with a breakfast feast, as well as the analysis of droppings to determine whether an animal was fit to be hunted. Once an animal was located and forced into the open, it had to be trapped or chased to exhaustion before it could be killed with a spear, sword or arrow. The hunt would conclude, naturally, with a celebratory meal, but the thrill of the chase was more important than the desire to put food on the table.
Phoebus devotes page after page to the study of worthy quarry, including stags, wild boars, hares, wolves, bears and wildcats. Some of the illustrations are more realistic than others; reindeer, which Phoebus claimed to have hunted in Norway and Sweden, are depicted with woolly, sheeplike bodies.
Another section of the “Livre” details various strategies of the hunt. Vegetarians and the generally squeamish will find much to object to in these pictures, which show creatures of the forest being flayed, pierced with spears and trapped in pits and nets.
The cruelty of the hunt was offset in some measure by the hunters’ respect for dogs. Phoebus bred hunting dogs and is said to have kept kennels for some 1,600 hounds. He devoted one of the four books of “Le Livre de la Chasse” to the nature and proper care of the “noblest and most reasonable beast.”
The illustration “Caring for Hounds” shows lucky canines receiving foot baths, haircuts and ear exams. Other miniatures show running hounds (which tracked prey by scent) and spaniels (often trained to catch birds and small game).
A dog’s loyalty was valued as much as its hunting prowess. A medieval bestiary (an illustrated compendium of animals) in the exhibition includes a picture of a dog said to have identified his master’s murderer; the faithful dog is shown crouching next to the dead body. Phoebus alludes to this story in “Le Livre de la Chasse.”
Those with houndishness in their hearts will be happy to know that animals had the upper hand in a popular genre known in medieval literature as the World Upside Down. In an illustration from a French Book of Hours (1280-90), a man is hunted by a dog and a rabbit.
So if you happen to be in New York City, New York, then make your way to the Morgan Library & Museum to view their ‘Illuminating the Medieval Hunt” which runs from late April to early August 2008.
Morgan Library & Museum, 225 Madison Avenue, at 36th Street, New York, USA. Or visit www.themorgan.org.
The reversal of hunter and hunted also had more profound, metaphysical implications. In a supplementary illustration (Book of Hours, Southern Netherlands, 1500), three princes returning from a hunt are confronted by three skeletal figures. Behind them, a hunter with two dogs blows his trumpet.
In that vein, Phoebus concluded “Le Livre de la Chasse” with a series of 37 prayers, one of which reads, “Praise be to the Lord, who has not delivered me to the Devil, like an animal captured by a hunter.”
He died, fittingly, after a rigorous bear hunt.
Woof!
Archibald, Esq.
Posted 12 May 08
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