It’s almost three months since I last posted on the January folio of the Très Riche Heures calendar section. Here’s a little more information which ties in with yesterday’s post on the update to the restoration work carried out on the Ghent Altarpiece.

Some of the features in the Altarpiece relate to the January folio produced by Barthélemy d’Eyck sometime after Jan van Eyck’s death in 1441.

In my previous post I made mention of the Holy Face feature in the sleeve of Henry Beaufort, one of the riders in the Ghent Altarpiece Knights of Christ panel, and how it had been almost obliterated in the recent restoration.

Beaufort, as bishop of Winchester, is the prelate seated at the end of the table, shown above in the detail from the January folio. Standing alongside Beaufort is Sir Thomas Blount who served as napperer (having charge of the table linen and which he would be allowed to keep) at Richard II’s coronation. He is seen carefully folding a napkin or face cloth. The square cloth is folded down twice to form a triangle pointing to Henry Beaufort. The table is laid out in a way to represent an altar cloth, but more precisely the burial cloth of Jesus, now referred to as the Shroud of Turin. The meat dish of lamb cuts is composed to represent the face of Christ that appears on the Shroud; the napkin represents the sudarium used to cover his face.

What Barthélemy is affirming is the implication Jan van Eyck made in the Ghent Atarpiece is that the napkin and possibly even the table cloth (or Shroud) found its way into the possession of the bishop of Winchester, considered one the richest men in England.

Thomas Blount was a loyal servant to Richard II. He took part in what is known as the “Epiphany Rising” in January 1400, a failed attempt to restore Richard to the throne after the king was usurped by Henry Bolingbroke (Henry IV). For this he was hung, drawn and quartered. The quartering is represented by the folded napkin, the hanging by the cloth draped around his wrist. Some of his internal organs were cut out and he was made to watch them burn in a fire before him. He was also beheaded when quartered.

The red dagging pattern represents both the cutting and the flames. Notice also the facial image in the black part of his left sleeve, a feature Van Eyck mirrored in Beaufort’s red sleeve seen in the Knights of Christ. The black sections also suggest that the quartering – cutting the body into four parts – was done by removing Blount’s two arms and his head.

Blount’s execution took place at the Green Ditch outside Oxford. This is indicated by the man standing behind Blount, wearing a green gown. There’s a familiar look about him. He resembles Jan van Eyck, or d’Eyck – dyke being the dutch translation of ditch – and his self-portrait of the Man in a Red Turban.

More on this in a future post.

UPDATE. In light of a later post about the January folio, this post was updated on Sunday, March 2, 2022.

Other posts on the January folio of Très Riche Heures:
Checking the guest list
There’s a book in this…
Identifying Pol Limbourg
Thoughts on the “wise men”
Telling tales about Chaucer
Happy New Year!
We’re going on a boar hunt!
The Pearl Poet… another sighting
A very rich duke and his bear
Playing hide and seek
A who’s who, what’s what list