Les Très Riches Heures du Duc de Berry at Chantilly

This week I made the trip out to Chantilly where, in the Jeu de Paume, the Condé museum is showing, quite exceptionally, the calendar folios of the Duc de Berry's Très Riches Heures . These twelve double-page spreads have just been restored, which explains why it was possible now to display them individually, in specially-made, air-conditioned cases, before they are bound back into the book and shut away, like Sleeping Beauty (the original Disney version of which they are said to have influenced), for the next hundred years, maybe more. The museum is marketing the show as a once-in-a-lifetime experience. According to museum director Mathieu Deldicque, who also curated the exhibition: ' This manuscript was already famous in the Middle Ages. By putting it back into context, we can better understand what makes it the most ambitious, where it came from, who commissioned it, and why, from the 15th century onwards, it had such a profound influence on the arts, manuscripts, painting,...