Revisiting Christ's Tomb: A Note on a Miniature in Bodleian MS Douce 313

Abstract

SOMETIME AROUND I350, a team of craftsmen originating in the Parisian workshop of Jean Pucelle produced a richly illuminated Missal, possibly for a Franciscan patron or a patron acting on behalf of the Franciscan order. Now preserved in Oxford's Bodleian Library as MS Douce 3I3,' the Missal features some 9I2 semi-grisaille miniatures, among them an intricately detailed and strikingly beau tiful rendition of Christ's Entombment, on fol. 236r (Fig. i). The scene takes place under a spectacular Rayonnant Gothic canopy that covers the entire height and width of the miniature. Delicately drawn and shown in oblique perspective from above, this lavish architectural confection develops in two principal storeys that rise over a rectangular base, at the corners of which are three small lions. Both tiers are accentuated by minutely observed and depicted microarchitectural details. The stage-like first level, on which the depositio proper is enacted, thus comprises four rotated corner pinnacles and an upper, veil-like frieze of richly-traceried arches. Here seven mourners surround the Corpus Christi in various postures of sorrow and despair. The upper storey, which soars above a minia ture balustrade with quatrefoil tracery, is more complex and dramatic in design. A second system of corner pinnacles enframes a continuous openwork arcade topped by a frieze of inverted quarter arches. Each pinnacle base supports a flying buttress that is connected to a. central, chasse-like struc ture decorated with more pinnacles, inverted arch friezes and exquisite tracery configura tions, in which hangs an elaborate, cone shaped candelabrum. Surmounting the sloping roof of this chdsse is a polygonal, windowed aedicule, the squat simplicity of which is at odds with the elegant architec tural flourishes that characterise the rest of the design. The elevation of Christ's elabo rate tomb canopy thus concludes, rather curiously, on an anticlimactic note. The miniature was first published by Barbara Lane in a Note in this JYournal, now some thirty years ago.2 Lane proposed a relationship between the canopy design and medieval representations of the ciborium sur mounting the tomb of Christ in the Anastasis Rotunda of the Holy Sepulchre. Her com parative examples a crusader seal and two ivory plaques, all from the twelfth century do indeed feature a lantern-like termination that is comparable to the polygonal aedicule crowning Christ's tomb canopy in the Bodleian miniature; one of the ivory plaques, which shows the Three Maries at the Tomb (here represented as a three-bay structure), also displays a hanging lamp of the kind seen inside the upper chdsse of the Douce sepulchre (Fig. 3). Lane acknowledged that considerable differences do, however, exist