# The Hours of Jeanne d'Evreux, Queen of France > Jean Pucelle - c. 1324-1328 > Canonical HTML: https://iconotheca.com/artworks/jean-pucelle/book-of-hours-jeanne-devreux/ > Published by Servola Systems GmbH. Last verified: 2026-08-28 ## Tombstone - **Artist:** Jean Pucelle - **Date:** c. 1324-1328 - **Medium:** Grisaille (camaieu gris) and tempera with gold leaf on vellum, in a Gothic textualis book hand - **Dimensions:** Each folio 9.2 x 6.2 cm (3 5/8 x 2 7/16 in); bound volume 9.9 x 7.2 x 3.8 cm (3 7/8 x 2 13/16 x 1 1/2 in); 209 folios - **Object type:** Manuscript - **Period:** French Gothic, early fourteenth century - **Current location:** The Cloisters, The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York - **Attribution:** accepted ## Summary A prayer book barely the size of a modern smartphone, painted almost entirely in shades of grey for a queen of France between 1325 and 1328, and now recognised as the surest surviving example of the hand of Jean Pucelle, the most consequential Parisian illuminator of his generation. Its 209 vellum leaves carry 25 full-page grisaille miniatures and roughly 700 further images, run in facing pairs of Passion and Infancy scenes borrowed from the format of contemporary ivory diptychs, with a marginal world of beggars, drolleries, and games running underneath that recent scholarship reads as a deliberate commentary on the pictures above.Its ownership can be documented in short, well-lit stretches separated by long stretches of dark. It passed, on strong but not undisputed evidence, from the queen to Charles V, then by an unrecorded route into the library of Jean, Duke of Berry, who by 1401 had it catalogued as 'the Hours of Pucelle.' After his death in 1416 it disappears for two centuries, resurfaces only as a coat of arms stamped into a rebound cover, disappears again, and does not reappear in the documentary record until it turns up in a nineteenth-century Rothschild collection.It was seized by German occupation authorities from the Rothschild family in 1940, found by an American Monuments officer in a Bavarian castle in 1945, restituted in 1948, and sold to the Metropolitan Museum in 1954 - the acquisition that broke the museum's own standing policy against buying manuscripts. It has been on public view at the Cloisters ever since. ## Provenance Every link carries a grade. `documented` means a cited source supports it, `disputed` means the identification is argued but not established, `unknown` means we have no owner for that span and have not bridged it. - **c. 1324-1328** Made for Jeanne d'Evreux, Queen of France (married Charles IV in 1325) `[documented]` (commission and production) Dated on stylistic and internal grounds to the years of Jeanne d'Evreux's marriage to Charles IV, who died in February 1328; her own 1371 will states that Charles IV 'had it made for Madame' and that Pucelle illuminated it, though the identification of that will entry with this specific object is itself disputed (see Open Questions). - **1328-1371** Jeanne d'Evreux, Queen of France, then Queen Dowager of France `[documented]` (personal ownership) Held through her long widowhood; she died 4 March 1371. - **1371-1380** Charles V, King of France `[disputed]` (bequest) Identification rests on the will's reference to a 'petit livret d'oroisons... que pucelle enlumina' bequeathed to Charles V; Elizabeth Flinn dissented from equating this with the present manuscript in the Metropolitan Museum's own 1971 Bulletin. If accepted, the book entered the royal library at Jeanne d'Evreux's death and appears, described in physical detail, in Charles V's 1380 inventory of jewels and small treasures. - **1380-1401-1402** Transmission unclear; reaches Jean, Duke of Berry `[unknown]` (transfer) Charles V died in 1380; his library passed first toward his son, the future Charles VI. The mechanism by which this book (or the belief that Charles V had owned it) reached his brother, Jean, Duke of Berry, is not documented in the sources consulted - by gift, inheritance, or purchase are all possible for objects in Berry's collection generally, but none is attested here specifically. - **1401-1402-1416** Jean, Duke of Berry `[documented]` (ownership, recorded in inventory) Catalogued in the Duke's own inventory, published by Jules Guiffrey, as 'les Heures de Pucelle... enlumees de blanc et de noir, a la usaige des Prescheurs.' The same period of ownership records the binding being changed to blue silk in 1402. The Duke died in 1416. - **1416-1618 (approx.)** Unknown `[unknown]` (gap) No owner, sale, or location is documented in any source consulted for this record across roughly two centuries following the Duke of Berry's death. - **1618-before 1672** Louis-Jules de Chatelet and Christine de Gleseneuve Bar `[documented]` (ownership) Established by physical evidence: two coats of arms on the leather binding currently on the manuscript, identifying the couple, who married in 1618 and were both dead before 1672. No document of acquisition or sale from this ownership survives in the sources consulted. - **before 1672-19th century** Unknown `[unknown]` (gap) A second extended gap of close to two centuries with no owner, sale, or location documented in the sources consulted. - **19th century-1900** Rothschild family collection (named as Alphonse de Rothschild of Geneva in general reference sources; named as Adolphe de Rothschild in Christopher de Hamel's specialist study of Rothschild manuscript collecting) `[disputed]` (acquisition) Sources consulted for this record disagree on which member of the Rothschild family first acquired the manuscript. Both accounts agree the collection passed, at the collector's death in 1900, toward Maurice de Rothschild in Paris. - **1900-1940** Maurice de Rothschild, Paris `[documented]` (inheritance/ownership) In the possession of Maurice de Rothschild in Paris by the early twentieth century, per both accounts of the preceding Rothschild ownership. - **1940-April 1945** Confiscated; held by German occupation authorities `[documented]` (wartime looting) Seized from Rothschild family holdings following the German occupation of France, as part of the organised confiscation of Jewish-owned art collections carried out by the Einsatzstab Reichsleiter Rosenberg (ERR); transported to and stored at Neuschwanstein Castle in Bavaria, alongside the ERR's own administrative card files on looted collections. - **April 1945-1948** Recovery by Allied Monuments, Fine Arts and Archives officers; restitution process `[documented]` (recovery and restitution) Found by Second Lieutenant James Rorimer at Neuschwanstein Castle, left in a wastepaper basket by retreating German personnel, together with two other illuminated manuscripts including the Belles Heures of Jean, Duke of Berry. Restituted to Maurice de Rothschild in 1948. - **1948-1953** Maurice de Rothschild, Paris `[documented]` (restored ownership) Held by Maurice de Rothschild following restitution until it was placed on the market. - **1953-1954** New York art market `[documented]` (sale) Came onto the New York market in 1953 as Maurice de Rothschild began selling parts of his manuscript collection. - **1954-present** The Cloisters, The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York `[documented]` (acquisition) Acquired in 1954; James Rorimer, by then a Museum curator, is credited with persuading the institution to override its usual policy against purchasing manuscripts in order to secure this one. Accession number 54.1.2 records the year. The purchase price has not been located in the sources consulted for this record. ## Auction results Hammer and buyer's premium are stated separately. Where a source conflates them this record says so. - **** , - Acquired by purchase, not gift or bequest, but the price paid has never been disclosed. The Metropolitan Museum's own collection record and Heilbrunn Timeline essay state only a Credit Line of The Cloisters Collection, 1954, with no sum named. Maurice de Rothschild was selling his family's manuscript collection in 1953-54 when James Rorimer persuaded the Museum to acquire it; no purchase figure appears there, in Timothy Graham's review of Christopher de Hamel's specialist study of Rothschild manuscript collecting, or in any other source consulted for this record. ## Open questions - Is this actually the 'petit livret d'oroisons' named in Jeanne d'Evreux's 1371 will? Elizabeth Flinn, writing for the Metropolitan Museum itself in 1971, doubted the identification on the grounds of the will's wording, the manuscript's lack of Jeanne d'Evreux's heraldry, and the calendar's uncorrected errors. The majority view accepts the identification; this record does not treat the question as closed. - Is the manuscript entirely by Pucelle's own hand, as Morand and Gould argue, or a workshop production circulating under his name, as Deuchler and Flinn argue? No autograph benchmark exists to settle the comparison. - By what route did the book pass from Charles V's library (recorded 1380) into the collection of Jean, Duke of Berry (recorded 1401-02)? The mechanism - gift, inheritance, or purchase - is not documented in the sources consulted. - Where was the manuscript between the Duke of Berry's death in 1416 and the physical evidence, on its current binding, of ownership by Louis-Jules de Chatelet and Christine de Gleseneuve Bar by the mid-seventeenth century? No owner, sale or location is recorded for this span. - Where was the manuscript between the Chatelet couple's deaths, before 1672, and its documented appearance in a Rothschild collection in the nineteenth century? A second gap of close to two centuries with no recorded owner. - Which Rothschild first acquired the manuscript, and how? Sources consulted for this record disagree by name - Alphonse de Rothschild of Geneva in general reference summaries, Adolphe de Rothschild in Christopher de Hamel's specialist study of Rothschild manuscript collecting - and this record has not resolved the conflict. - What price did the Metropolitan Museum pay Maurice de Rothschild in 1954? Not published in any source consulted for this record. - Why does the calendar of a manuscript this lavish, made on the accepted identification for a queen, carry more than thirty misspelled saints' names, roughly fifteen incorrect feast days, and ten wholly unornamented folios? No source consulted offers a settled explanation. ## Sources - [1] The Metropolitan Museum of Art, Heilbrunn Timeline of Art History, 'Jean Pucelle: The Hours of Jeanne d'Evreux, Queen of France.' - [2] The Metropolitan Museum of Art, collection record for The Hours of Jeanne d'Evreux, Queen of France, accession 54.1.2. - [3] Wikipedia, 'Hours of Jeanne d'Evreux.' Tertiary source consolidating provenance and codicological detail; flagged for replacement with Elizabeth Flinn's and Florens Deuchler's original 1971 Metropolitan Museum Bulletin essays and Kathleen Morand's 1962 monograph. - [4] Wikipedia, 'Jean Pucelle.' Tertiary source for the biographical and documentary summary. Flagged for replacement with Marc Gil's archival study and Kathleen Morand's monograph. - [5] Wikipedia, 'Belleville Breviary.' Tertiary source, used only for the comparandum entry in Related Works. Flagged for replacement with Florens Deuchler's original attribution study. - [6] Deuchler, Florens. 'Jean Pucelle: Facts and Fictions.' The Metropolitan Museum of Art Bulletin, n.s. 29, no. 6 (February 1971): 253-256. - [7] Flinn, Elizabeth Haight. 'A Magnificent Manuscript: A Historical Mystery.' The Metropolitan Museum of Art Bulletin, n.s. 29, no. 6 (February 1971). - [8] Morand, Kathleen. 'Jean Pucelle: A Re-Examination of the Evidence.' The Burlington Magazine 103, no. 699 (June 1961): 206-211. Cited via Wikipedia's bibliography for this manuscript; the original article was not independently fetched for this record. - [9] Gould, Karen. 'Jean Pucelle and Northern Gothic Art: New Evidence from Strasbourg Cathedral.' The Art Bulletin 74, no. 1 (March 1992): 51-74. - [10] Graham, Timothy. Review of Christopher de Hamel, The Rothschilds and Their Collections of Illuminated Manuscripts (London: British Library, 2005). The Medieval Review 06.10.18 (2006). - [11] Reporting on James Rorimer's April 1945 discovery of looted manuscripts, including this one, at Neuschwanstein Castle, and his subsequent role at the Metropolitan Museum; consolidated from the Metropolitan Museum's own account of Rorimer's Monuments Men service and from Timothy Graham's review (source 10). - [12] Holladay, Joan A. 'Fourteenth-century French Queens as Collectors and Readers of Books: Jeanne d'Evreux and Her Contemporaries.' Journal of Medieval History 32, no. 2 (2006): 119-136. - [13] Guiffrey, Jules, ed. Inventaires de Jean, duc de Berry (1401-1416). Paris, 1894-96. Full text consulted for the 1401-02 inventory entry describing 'les Heures de Pucelle.' - [14] Gil, Marc. 'L'enlumineur Jean Pucelle et les graveurs de sceaux parisiens: l'exemple du sceau de Jeanne de France, reine de Navarre (1329-1349).' Archival study of Pucelle's documented Parisian activity, including the confraternity of Saint-Jacques-aux-Pelerins and the Parisian tax rolls of the 1320s. - [15] The Metropolitan Museum of Art, 'Patronage of Jean de Berry (1340-1416),' Heilbrunn Timeline of Art History essay, consulted for the general mechanism by which manuscripts entered the Duke of Berry's library. - [16] The Metropolitan Museum of Art, 'Making The Met's Collection More Accessible,' on the 2017 Open Access (CC0) policy governing the Museum's own photography of public-domain works, used to verify the licence basis for the images in this record. - [17] Wikimedia Commons, Category:The Hours of Jeanne d'Evreux, and the individual file pages for each image used in this record, consulted to verify folio identification and the extmetadata.LicenseShortName field (CC0 for Metropolitan Museum donations; Public domain for the self-scanned Belleville Breviary comparandum) on a per-file basis. --- Images on this record are public domain or CC0 and are hosted by us. 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