The story of Paul, Jean, and Herman de Limbourg is fragmented and mostly forgotten. We don’t know exactly when they were born, but it seems the talented sibling trio were dead by the year 1416, each taken by the Plague before the eldest had reached their thirties. One thing we do know is that, during their relatively brief and turbulent lives, they produced what is considered to be among the most beautiful and important art of the Late Gothic period.
Their great opus, The Very Rich Hours of Duke Berry aka Très riches heures du Duc Berry contains some of the finest examples of illuminated texts and its bountiful illustrations are believed to be the major influence on the development of visual arts that ushered in the Northern Renaissance. Painted onto pages of vellum, the book is striking in its liberal use of a vibrant blue pigment containing the mineral lapis lazuli, which at the time could only be sourced from the Sar-i Sang mines, in a region of what is now Afghanistan. It was more expensive, weight-for-weight than any precious metal. For this reason, religious art during this period favoured its distinctive vivid blue over the burnishing of gold or silver…
