We are all “other Christs” for each other

Jean Bourdichon (c. 1457–1521) surely could have taken his place in the Pantheon of the ten greatest French painters, but alas, his works did not withstand the injuries of time. To the point where, for lack of remaining works to be seen, he fell into almost complete oblivion. 

Indeed, the only surviving great work that can be attributed to him with certainty is a sumptuous manuscript decorated with miniatures, Les Grandes Heures of Anne of Brittany, Queen of France, which he finished around 1508. The cover of this month’s issue of Magnificat reproduces one of the illustrations of this masterpiece of the art of illumination. 

Here, then, as seen by Bourdichon, is the famous scene in which the legionary Martin, in the winter of a.d. 334, gave part of his cloak to a beggar. Sulpicius Severus (363-410?), his biographer, informs us that the following night Christ appeared to him in a dream clothed in that same piece of the cloak. 

Saint Martin is depicted as a knight-banneret (one who personally leads his vassals into battle), wearing the armor and the crown, an ornamented circle of gold set with rubies and emeralds. He is clothed in a gold brocaded surcoat, decorated with palm branches to signify his canonization, and a lapis-lazuli doublet with a scroll pattern in gold. “Banneret” was at first a military title won on the battlefields. 

Like Saint Martin, whom he depicts in the form of a knight who defends the values of his oath, Bourdichon considered himself a member of the resistance, fighting the good fight with the weapons of his art. Resistance against what? Against the Renaissance and the disenchantment of life that it entailed. In order to understand what was at stake, we should recall that Bourdichon was the official painter of King Francis I, like Leonardo da Vinci, who was active at the same time; their studios near Tours were only about twelve miles apart, and they worked together on occasion. A comparison of their works, however, strikingly shows that they were worlds apart. Vasari says with good reason that Leonardo enabled the West to “put the medieval period behind it, along with its art, which was foreign to nature.” As for Bourdichon, he intended to remain in the Middle Ages and refused to enter into the Renaissance movement, with its new system of depicting the world which leads to a new relation between human beings and their God, between the Christian and his faith. 

Saint Martin as a good Samaritan

In order to show the presence of otherworldly, divine influences in this world and human life, Bourdichon does not paint objects and figures in a natural, realistic way, as Leonardo does while giving them a meaning through an elaborate, already mannerist symbolism. Instead, in front of a mythical landscape, he places idealized figures whom he lights up by highlighting their clothing with thin stripes of gold. 

This artificial illumination signifies the divine grace that lights up the figure’s life and inspires him to act on earth as another Jesus Christ, carrying out the will of his Father: here by giving a token of love to a poor man. The latter—genuflecting, his hands folded, his eyes heightened with white and turned devoutly toward Saint Martin as though toward heaven—confirms by his posture that it is indeed another Jesus Christ who graciously clothes him with a shared mantle, which itself is presented as being full of grace since it is illuminated, like the donor, with streaks of gold. 

It is possible therefore to reflect on this miniature as a manifesto calling for the re-enchantment of our lives with divine grace, and first of all by the grace of the New Commandment, the Christian practice that makes each of us another Jesus Christ for others, whether he performs works of charity or receives them. This is in fact an invitation to imitate Saint Martin and the poor man, by making the parable of the Good Samaritan come true in our lives, a parable in which our Lord is at the same time the one who is saved by the one who saves—You did it to me (Mt 25:40) and the one who saves for the one who is saved—Besides me there is no Savior (Hos 13:4).
 

Pierre-Marie Dumont
Saint Martin sharing his cloak with a poor man, illumination from Les Grandes Heures of Anne of Brittany, Latin 9474 Fol. 189v, Jean Bourdichon (c. 1457–1521), BnF, Paris. © BnF, Dist. RMN-GP / image BnF.