January — The Duke's New Year
The calendar's famous frontispiece: Jean de Berry at his own feast table.
- Work
- Book of Hours (calendar cycle)
- Artist / creator
- The Limbourg Brothers (Herman, Paul & Jean de Limbourg); later folios completed by Jean Colombe
- Origin & date
- Franco-Flemish, c. 1412–1416 (later miniatures c. 1485–1489)
- Held by
- Musée Condé, Chantilly
Format
The full-resolution color-managed file — yours to print, study, and keep.
Sized to protect print quality — this scan's resolution supports sizes up to 8x10 cleanly.
Size
$24.00
The story
The best-known image in the entire manuscript: the Duc de Berry himself, in blue robes trimmed in fur, seated before a roaring fire at his New Year's feast, urging his guests to "aproche, aproche" beneath a woven tapestry depicting a battle. Behind him, gold and silver vessels from his famous collection — a golden ship-shaped nef, salt cellars, cups — are piled on a credenza, an unmistakable display of Valois wealth. Above the scene, a lunette shows the zodiac wheel and the Duke's chariot of the sun for Capricorn and Aquarius. This is medieval court life at its most specific and least allegorical: real courtiers, a real dog on the table, a real household caught mid-gesture, painted with an observational precision that points forward toward the Renaissance.
About this reproduction
- Faithful reproduction of a public-domain work, sourced from Musée Condé, Chantilly’s open-access release.
- Printed to order on archival cotton-rag stock, pigment inks rated 100+ years.
- Color-managed to the source scan.
- Available as a Gold-Foil Premium Edition — a metallic accent print evoking the illuminator’s gold, for a piece from one of the tradition’s luminous, gilded manuscripts.
- Ships in 5–8 business days; satisfaction guaranteed.
See it framed
Room
Frame
Shown as a 8x10″ archival print, true to the piece's own proportions, on a real photographed wall.
From The Calendar
February — The Peasants' Hearth
A snow-covered farmyard, and the coldest, tenderest scene in the calendar.
March — Plowing at Lusignan
Sowers and shepherds beneath a fairy-tale castle on the horizon.
April — The Betrothal
A ring exchanged before the Château de Dourdan, in the year's first green.
May — The Green Ride
A cavalcade of nobles in may-green, riding out to welcome the spring.