Catalogue Roberti Fine Art, TEFAF Maastricht 2026 (1) compressed - Flipbook - Page 16
This distinguished Book of Hours stands among the most accomplished productions associated
with the illuminator conventionally known as the Master of the Ghent Privileges, who was active in
the diocese of Tournai in the mid-fifteenth century. The artist derives his name from the
sumptuous copy of the Statutes and Privileges of Ghent and Flanders prepared for Philip the Good
(Vienna, Österreichische Nationalbibliothek, Cod. 2583), from which his distinctive hand was first
isolated by F. Winkler in 1915. Subsequent scholarship, notably that of Gregory Clark, refined the
corpus and proposed a workshop structure linking activity in Ghent and Tournai between circa
1440 and 1460.
Although working at a moment when Netherlandish illumination was increasingly attentive to
spatial naturalism, the Master retained a consciously traditional pictorial language. His
compositions are structured through steeply raked planes and elevated horizons; architecture is
crisply articulated, and the figures, compact, volumetric, and immediately legible, occupy the space
around them with sculptural clarity. Colour is deployed with saturated brilliance and disciplined
harmony rather than atmospheric diffusion. The resulting visual order privileges structural
coherence and ornamental precision, reflecting the Master’s formation within the earlier circle of
the Masters of Guillebert de Mets, while still asserting a distinctive maturity. Recent archival
research has strengthened the historical grounding of this corpus by identifying Johannes Ramont
the Elder in Ghent and his son Johannes Ramont the Younger in Tournai; the latter may plausibly
be equated with the Master of the Ghent Privileges. Clark identified a group of manuscripts datable
between the mid-1450s and circa 1460 that represent the illuminator’s most assured phase,
including the Vienna Privileges, the Brussels City of God, the Lille Missal, Walters MS 719, and the
present ex-Kraus Hours. Within this mature corpus the artist achieves greater compositional
ambition and a heightened command of spatial orchestration.
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