The Entombment (Stabat Mater Prayer), from a Book of Hours

Jean Colombe · c. 1480

Medium

Manuscript cutting in tempera and gold paint, with littera batarda inscriptions in gold, recto, and light black, verso, on parchment dyed black

Original size

4.1 × 8.3 cm (1 5/8 × 3 5/16 in.)

Currently held

Art Institute of Chicago

Movement

Italian Renaissance

The black-dyed parchment alone signals that this is no ordinary devotional image — figures rendered in tempera and burnished gold emerge from darkness with an intensity that few manuscripts of the period could match. Jean Colombe was among the most accomplished illuminators working in late fifteenth-century France, based in Bourges and closely tied to the ducal courts of his era. His hand is distinguished by a rich palette, fluid drapery, and a gift for emotional restraint that keeps even grief-filled scenes like the Entombment dignified rather than theatrical. The littera batarda inscriptions — the flowing Gothic cursive that frames the image — are as considered as the painting itself, integrating text and image into a unified devotional object. Colombe's workshop is widely credited with completing the Très Riches Heures du Duc de Berry around 1485, one of the most celebrated illuminated manuscripts in existence, left unfinished after the deaths of the Limbourg Brothers some seven decades earlier. Our hand-painted oil reproduction translates Colombe's layered tempera and gold work into the warmth of oil on canvas, preserving the luminosity and emotional gravity of the original — a piece that once existed as a private act of devotion, now available to carry that same quiet weight into your home.