In the Winter of 1493, the parchment had been prepared. The words had been copied in by a scribe, who worked for the Bourdichon atelier. The artist consigned to create paintings -- in each of the blank spaces provided by the scribe -- was about to begin work. He respected the long hours and difficult work that the scribe had done, but he himself was not a scribe.
He was a young adventurer from a noble Breton family. Although, in Winter months, he worked as an illuminator, beginning in late Spring, he captained a fishing boat that sailed to the Grand Banks of Newfoundland, where, to fish for Cod, his Breton vessel joined Basque, Portuguese, Spanish, English, and Norman boats. The four week journey and the return with a hold full of barrels of salted Cod was known in the maritime towns of his and other countries, but the navigable routes were at this time closely guarded secrets.
Spending a Winter in the atelier of the legendary Jean Bourdichon was an unexpected honor. The book of hours, he was about to illuminate was destined for Louis duc d'Orleans, who -- although he fought on the Breton side at the Battle of Saint-Aubin-du-Cormierbut -- was pardoned by his cousin, King Charles VIII of France. In this era of shifting alliances, Louis duc d'Orleans was now a Commander in Charles VIII's Army. The King of France himself had commissioned this book of hours as a gift for his commander, but it was his wife, Anne of Brittany, Queen of France, who chose the son of a Breton nobleman to illustrate it.
Into the gridded spaces created by the scribe, he would first outline the designs he had sketched. Then, before they were painted, he would inlay the gold.
