When Elizabeth Morrison, senior curator of manuscripts at the Getty Museum, learned that the missing page from the Hours of Louis XII had been found, “It felt like an actual unicorn was led into my office,” she remembers.
The moment had been a long time coming. Getty acquired three full-page images from a 15th-century manuscript, the Hours of Louis XII, in 2003 and 2004. Curators always suspected that one of the images was actually half of a diptych—meaning there was another image that accompanied it, originally facing it in the book. The image depicts Louis XII and four saints gazing at something to the left; clearly, another page completes the story. But the Getty curators never imagined they’d actually find that corresponding page.
That is, until it appeared in in France in 2018, almost 200 years after it had last been recorded in a country house in England.
Getty recently acquired this newly discovered page, finally reuniting it with its “other half” for the first time since the mid-19th century.
“I was more stunned than anything else. It's sort of this mythical thing that I just never thought would actually materialize,” Morrison says. “It's always a totally random string of events that leads to a manuscript page being rediscovered, because they're out there. We just don't know where they are.”
From France to England
The manuscript’s story begins in 1498, when it was created by court painter Jean Bourdichon for Louis XII, in commemoration of his ascension to the throne. In those days, it was common for wealthy patrons to commission manuscripts to use in prayer and that portrayed them as pious devotees of the church, supported by powerful allies. In fact, this is exactly what’s depicted in the page Getty acquired back in 2004—Louis XII, kneeling in the center, is surrounded by Saint Michael, Saint Charlemagne, Saint Louis of France, and Saint Denis.
The book eventually came to England, probably through Louis XII’s third wife, Mary Tudor, who returned to England after Louis XII’s death in 1515. Around the year 1700, the manuscript was disbound and the images were separated from the text, sold, and dispersed around the world. This was a sadly common fate for manuscripts, especially for luxury books with particularly beautiful images.
At some point, most of the text pages went to the British Museum, while the detached images continued to circulate among dealers and collections. The page of Louis XII kneeling and its facing counterpart were both likely in the collection of English art collector William Beckford by 1835, and the page with Louis XII was part of the sale of his collection after his death in 1848. We don’t know how or when the other page left his collection.
In the years since, illustrations from the manuscript have been found all over the world and were particularly identifiable by manuscripts scholars due to their unique artistic style. When Getty acquired its three illuminations in 2003 and 2004 (all from different sources), curators recognized that the image of Louis XII kneeling and surrounded by saints very closely resembled another image Bourdichon created for the king’s second wife, Anne of Brittany, which faced an image of the Virgin Mary’s lamentation over the dead body of Christ. They also knew of a report published about Beckford’s collection, which noted that the illustration of Louis XII kneeling in prayer was framed along with an image of a “virgin and child.” So they had reason to suspect there was another image out there that completed the diptych. But where was it?
An Unexpected Discovery
Fifteen years later, manuscripts dealer Sandra Hindman, who works closely with Morrison, visited her at the Getty Center and told her, “You’re going to be really excited about this.”
The missing illumination had appeared in an auction in France, after which it was shown to Hindman, who suspected it might be the work of Jean Bourdichon. Art historian Nicholas Herman, the leading scholar of Bourdichon’s work, confirmed that it was indeed painted by the artist and identified it as the missing frontispiece leaf from the Hours of Louis XII.
The connection was obvious for a few different reasons. For example, the use of color on the two pages matches. Also, the distinctive gold frame around each image is exactly the same size. In addition, the image of Christ makes perfect sense when paired with the image of Louis XII kneeling in prayer (also making the diptych extremely similar to the Anne of Brittany diptych). Reuniting the two images also explained why Getty’s original image of Louis XII was cut through the gold frame at the top: to make it the same size as the image of the Lamentation that originally faced it. When the two pages were mounted side by side in a frame for display, likely in the 19th century, they would have been precisely the same height.
“We had always wondered, ‘Why wouldn't you cut it along the top edge of the frame?’” Morrison says. “Well, it was probably because someone cut down the Lamentation page first and then realized they'd made a mistake and wanted the two sides to be the same height, so they had to cut through the frame on the top of the right side to preserve the text on the bottom of the page with Louis XII.”
Together Again
The two pages will be on view at the Getty Center in February 2025. It’s a satisfying conclusion for Morrison, who knows all too well how miraculous it is when missing pages from a manuscript are rediscovered.
“I think there are many detached pages out there in private homes where the people don’t know what they have,” she says. “It looks like a painting on the wall to them, and they don't think, ‘Oh, maybe this belongs to a manuscript and somebody else has the rest of it.’ I am sure these two pages are so glad to see each other again!”
