The Condé Museum at the Château de Chantilly, north of Paris, has opened a special exhibition of the Très Riches Heures, the celebrated 15th-century illuminated manuscript. For the first time in decades, the public can view the 12 monthly calendar pages as independent works, detached from the manuscript after a painstaking conservation project. The exhibition, running until October, also features around 100 loaned medieval manuscripts, sculptures, and paintings to contextualize the manuscript's importance. The Très Riches Heures, commissioned by the Duc de Berry and begun by the Limbourg brothers around 1411, has been held at Chantilly since 1856 and is normally never lent out due to the conditions of the Duke d'Aumale's bequest.
This exhibition matters because it offers a rare, possibly once-in-a-lifetime chance to see the Très Riches Heures' calendar miniatures up close before the manuscript is rebound and returned to storage. The work is widely considered the greatest medieval illuminated manuscript, marking the first full-page calendar miniatures ever made and signaling the arrival of the Renaissance in northern Europe. Its lavish use of lapis lazuli and gold, combined with unprecedented realism, humor, and landscape, makes it a pivotal artifact in art history. The show also highlights the fragility of such treasures and the careful conservation required to preserve them for future study.