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These are matching scrolls for the Order of the Pelican, made for my friends Erikr and Astridr who are husband and wife.
The inspiration for the scroll was the patron and virgin portraits from the Hours of Simon de Varie, currently in the collection
of the Getty Museum. The illuminator of the book of hours was Jean Fouquet, who was a much better portraitist than I
am.
| The Inspiration Piece |
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| This is the patron portrait from the Simon de Varie Hours. |
This is a picture of the actual manuscript which I took during one of the times it has been on display at the Getty.
The actual book is pretty small, maybe only about 4 or 5 inches tall. Fouquet worked a lot of detail into these tiny
paintings. The only "mistake" I made in doing the reproductions was that the gold frames on the real piece are in shell
gold, and I did mine in gold leaf.
These pieces were done on goat parchment, using period pigments. I used mostly gum arabic as the binder, but did
use some glair. The primary colors were vermillion, yellow ochre, ivory black, cochineal, van dyke brown, ultramarine
(that was synthetic as the real stuff is too expensive), and terra verte. There were other colors as well but I used
some of them for very small areas so I don't recall what they all were. I used 23.75K gold leaf as well as shell gold
for the gold highlights. The vine work in the clementines is walnut ink.
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I was fortunate in my inspiration piece in that Erikr decided to wear a costume for his elevation that is nearly identical
to the one that Simon de Varie is wearing in his patron portrait. Astridr was wearing a new Italian Renaissance dress,
in red rather than the traditional blue of the Virgin.
| Astridr & Erikr (center) |
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| Walking into court for their elevation, accompanied by Astra and Bruce. |
| Astridr's Pelican |
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| Illumination detail - Astridr as the Virgin |
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In this more detailed picture, you can see the changes I made for Astridr's portrait. First of all, rather than
holding the baby Jesus, she is holding her son Nathan who actually was about the right age at her elevation for this painting.
I painted her in her elevation costume rather than a blue robe, although Astridr looks enough like the Virgin Mary's usual
picture that I was tempted to just paint her as the Virgin. I also added her arms, leaning against the chair.
No crest on this one though - it would have obscurred too much of the figure.
Below is the text from the scroll. The calligraphy on this one came out very nicely. Since the Getty has
never published a true facsimile of the Simon de Varie hours, I had almost no text to use as a basis for the calligraphy.
A friend at the museum was able to pull some text pages off the museum's microfiche collection of the manuscript for me.
| Astridr's Pelican - Text |
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| Detail - Astridr |
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But that was really just a minor problem. Because of the red of the dress I had to change the drapery color behind
the seated figure in her miniature, as the original had used red as the drapes. So Astridr's painting is less like the
original than the one for Erikr. On his, the only thing I really changed was of the figure holding his shield, who I
modeled after his daughter Elizabeth wearing her favorite German Landsknecht gown, and added the Pelican as a crest rather
than the crest of Simon.
| The Elevation Ceremony |
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| A nice picture from the back. |
| Erikr's Pelican |
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| Illumination detail - Erikr as the Patron |
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Above is the detail from Erikr's portrait. I'm a lousy portrait painter, though, so it doesn't look much like him.
But Erikr was thoughtful enough to actually wear a heraldic tabard like Simon de Varie was wearing in his portrait, and that
was what really made me think of this piece when looking to start their scrolls.
Below is the text page from this scroll. While I think Erikr's illumination came out better than Astridr's, the text
on this scroll isn't nearly as nice. You can tell where I switched to a different pen nib (I was having trouble with
the one I had been using - it was very blobby looking). Which I guess just goes to show that even calligraphy Laurels
can screw it up sometimes.
| Erikr's Pelican - Text |
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| Detail - Erikr |
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