Some Anonymous “Artists of the Abbey”

Late last year in our novitiate’s Introduction to Liturgy course (cf. The Current: Dec. 5-11), we spent several class sessions discussing illuminated Books of the Hours from the Renaissance and medieval periods. Besides examining reprints of two of the most well-known examples, those of Catherine of Cleves and the Belles Heures of Jean, Duke of Berry, as well as pages and volumes preserved in the collections of the J. Pierpont Morgan Library in New York City and the Walters Art Gallery in Baltimore, we examined 12 specific single pages from our own Abbey Collection.  They are framed and mounted, appropriately enough, on the 15^th-century oak linenfold-paneled wall in the monks’ private dining room.

The remarkable thing about our class time together is that we are not constrained by viewing merely pictures in books, art museum catalogs, or via ‘compare-and-contrast’ slide projections (as in my art history courses back in college in the ‘70’s). We have the luxury of viewing fine examples of painted book pages displayed in the monastery. In a category of paintings that stands alone, these artworks are unsigned, hence anonymous, and remind us that not all the “Artists of the Abbey” which we write about and share with you are known quantities or personages. 

Art historians categorize these books into various subsets including psalters, antiphonals and calendars, the latter being similar in nature to the yearly ordo by which the Church organizes its seasons, both ordinary and extraordinary, and its days of the year. Despite this regimentation, we discover some fluidity, as within every year the commemoration of certain saints is superseded by the requisite celebration of the solemnity of the Sunday. For example, the day after Christmas is normally reserved for St. Stephen, Protomartyr, but December 26, 2021 fell on a Sunday, which thus took precedence over the feast day of the Church’s first martyr.

We have not discovered, as of yet, any intact complete illuminated books in the abbey collection.  Instead, we have a number of single pages, two-sided, from books which were disassembled at some point over the centuries.  Either the string bindings were untied, or pages were simply cut out. This dissection was oftentimes undertaken by unscrupulous book dealers who could demand higher prices for the individual pages than could be had by selling the complete book.

During the recent unpacking of monastery furnishings following the second phase of renovation which took place in the summer of 2021, a picture frame resurfaced holding just such a single page of an illuminated book. A type-written letter taped to the back purported it to be “a prayer written on parchment by a Monk nearly five hundred years ago.” It will soon be sent out for conservation and reframing, after which it will be displayed again in the house, perhaps for another 500 years, deo volente. For this installment of our continuing “Artists of the Abbey” series, I would like to focus our thoughts on this one particular page, and its personal connection with a Portsmouth monk.

Like most book pages, it has impressions on both sides, and this one measures 6½” wide by 10¼” high. The front, or obverse side, is usually framed so as to face the viewer with its more ornate and detailed embellishment of the script. The back, or reverse, is usually less interesting and rarely seen.  Fine examples, however, are often framed with double glass so as to allow both sides to be viewed. While some pages have highly decorated borders or initials, some are representational and include one or more finely worked illustrations of Gospel stories. A treasure in our collection shows the miracle of the wine and water at the Marriage Feast at Cana, clearly and judiciously limned within a 2” x 3” space, about the size of a large postage stamp. The finest details were most likely painted with a single hair.

The letter referred to above was apparently typed and signed on June 2, 1958, by W. Atlee Burpee, Jr. (1894-1966), son of the founder of what is today known as the Burpee Seed Company – Washington Atlee Burpee, Sr. (1858-1915). Any gardener sitting at home daydreaming over seed catalogs during a blizzard like the one that blanketed Portsmouth last weekend is surely familiar with the Burpee brand. Two days before Mr. Burpee-the-younger typed his letter in Philadelphia, our Fr. Christopher Davis, now 91, was ordained to the priesthood, on May 31, 1958.  This particular illuminated page was a gift marking “the occasion of your conducting your first Mass.” On January 17, the day of the recent abbatial election at Portsmouth, Fr. Christopher joined the community from his residence at the Grand Islander Center in Middletown to cast his vote. Afterwards, he was shown the framed page and the letter and reminisced warmly about the Davis Family connection to the Burpee Family. His father had worked as a sales rep at a Philadelphia printing company whose biggest client was the W. Atlee Burpee Co., for which they produced seed packets, those famous Burpee seed catalogs, and other printed paper products.

The medieval illuminators of these ‘painted prayers’ will largely remain anonymous, much like the creators of the stained-glass roundels in the Stillman Dining Hall and our Hungerford Collection of medieval stained glass, both highlighted previously in The Current. In 2004-05, just months before I entered the St. Louis Abbey, a traveling exhibition was installed at the Saint Louis Art Museum. Titled, Medieval Bestseller: The Book of Hours, it also drew record crowds at The Pierpont Morgan Library in New York; the Kimball Art Museum in Fort Worth; and the J. Paul Getty Museum in Los Angeles.  It afforded me for the first time a close-up examination of these miniature masterpieces.

For the record, I include here the transcript of the brief letter to Fr. Christopher, along with a translation of the excerpts from Psalms 84 and 85 which are penned on the sheet of vellum.