Minisode 4: The Clothilde Missal

Bonjour, mes bijoux! Yes, that's you--my jewels. Speaking of a jewel... this minisode celebrates an art historical jewel known as the Clothilde Missal, an early twentieth-century illuminated manuscript by Clothilde Coulaux in the collection of the Walters Art Museum in Baltimore. Come for the jewel-toned escapism into an idealized version of the Middle Ages, stay in spite of the toxic white lead.

Transcript

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Wait, am I recording? You are listening to Stuff About Things, an art history podcast. All right, let's bango. Hello and welcome to Stuff About Things, an Art History Podcast. My name is Lindsay, bonjour, and I'm coming to you today with a mini sode, which I categorize as any episode under 30 minutes. Mind you, I do record the podcast in order, and based on the number of words in my current document, it might not be so many, but uh I'll give it a go. For this mini-sode, I am talking about a rather obscure object that 99.5% of you have probably never heard of, but that I love and I want more people to know about. I first heard about this object about three years ago at an art history conference, and I haven't stopped thinking about it since, obviously. As I worked on the episodes about the Book of Kells and Illuminated Manuscripts, it seemed like the perfect opportunity to learn more about this object. That's what brings us here, to the par where I tell you stuff about a curious little manuscript and the woman who made it, all in under 30 minutes. The Clotilde Missile by Clotilde Coulot. Before talking about the missile itself, I wanted to first acknowledge my main sources because there's not a whole lot written on the Clotilde Missile. First and foremost, a massive shout out to Lindley Herbert, who is the associate curator of rare books and manuscripts at the Walters Art Museum in Baltimore. Lindley is the person who gave that talk I heard three years ago, and she also wrote an essay about the Clotilde Missile that is equally wonderful. The other two people I want to shout out are Gianfranco Malaferina and Sandra Hindman, who have also researched and written about this object. Without them, this episode would not be a thing. The Clotiled Missile is an illuminated manuscript in the collection of the Walters Art Museum in Baltimore. Unlike most illuminated manuscripts, though, this one was not made in the Middle Ages, but rather in the early 20th century. What's up with that? Don't worry, I'll tell you all about it. The Clotiled Missile is a small volume bound in reddish-brown leather, and it measures approximately 3.5 by 5 inches. That said, at about 174 pages, she be thick. I should say though that these are pages in the modern sense of the word and not folios. For more on that, see Mini Sode 3. Every single one of those 174 pages has an illumination, including 28 full-page illuminations and an additional 20 almost full page illuminations, which is crazy. As suggested by its title, the Clotiled Missile is a missile.

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Phew!

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No, not that kind of missile, the other kind of missile. M-I-S-S-A-L. That kind of missile. A missile is a type of prayer book containing various texts related to different Christian masses held throughout the year, including but not limited to things like prayers, songs, instructions. The list goes on. The Clotilde Missile is called the Clotilde Missile after its maker, a young French woman named Clotilde Coulot. We know that because she tells us on the second to last page, which is where you can find the book's coliphon. These are fairly common in books, it's just a final declaration of who made it, be that an author or a publisher. In this case, it was the author. The coliphon in this missal is written in French, and when translated, reads, quote, This Roman missal was completed in honor of our Lord Jesus Christ on the 29th of June in the year of grace 1906, the feast day of the Holy Apostles Peter and Paul, by Clotilde Coulot, resident of the city of Molsheim, on the street of Notre Dame facing the parish church. End quote. But that's not the most interesting thing about page 173, because beneath the words that compose the colophon, there is an illumination. That illumination shows a young woman at her writing desk, bent daintily over a stack of parchment with her quill at the ready. It is very safe to assume that this is a self-portrait of Clotilde herself, but not as she was, because it's clear that this is no modern young woman. She instead wears a dress far more appropriate to the Middle Ages than the modern ones, down to the bonnet that she's wearing, which is a henan, a style typically associated with the late Middle Ages. Much like this portrait of its maker, the world Clotilde Coulot depicts in the pages of her book is a manufactured one. It is a medieval masquerade, a jewel-toned dreamscape of what life might have been like in a different age, one populated by brightly dressed maidens and knights, as well as castles, ships, and even the occasional dancing skeletons. But despite, and sometimes because of, this occasional deathly interlude, the manuscript is nothing short of a joy. Clotilde Coulot was born on October 1st, 1878, in Molsheim, a small town in the Alsace region of present-day France. When Clotilde was born, however, the vast majority of Alsace belonged to the German Empire, which was a pesky consequence of France losing the Franco-Prussian War in 1871. Clotilde and her family, however, were French through and through. Her father's side of the family had become wealthy by manufacturing arms and armor, including supplying such products to the French army. They would later produce such items for the Germans, which earned them a pretty bad rep around town, but hey, a family's gotta eat, especially if they have a cat. Which is a reference that will make sense in a little bit. Clotilde's mother's family built their wealth in the textile and fabric business. Fittingly, arms, armor, and rich fabrics appear frequently throughout Clotilde's Missal, perhaps in a nod to these family businesses. We don't know that much about Clotilde's early life or her life in general. We do know that she grew up with her father and two sisters in a house near the church of Notre Dame in Molschein. Sadly, her mother passed away when Clotilde was just five. Outside of things like official records that, you know, tell you where people lived and when they lived and died, there's really only one mention of Clotilde out in the world, at least that I know of. That comes in 1896, when she was 18 years old. T'was in that year that Clotilde entered a competition for amateur illuminators being held by a kind of trade journal dedicated to the topic. Now you might be thinking, Lindsay, why would an 18-year-old young woman be interested in manuscript illumination in the year 1896? What a strange hobby! That is a great question. To answer it, we need a little bit of context. In the 1800s and early 1900s, the Middle Ages had something of a renaissance, which I know seems oxymoronic, but just go with it. At this time, people in Europe and North America started to feel this nostalgia for the idea they had of that time. One of chavalric knights and sprawling castles and a seemingly more civilized highbrow society. Of course, this vision of the Middle Ages was far more fantasy than historical reality. Case in point, they didn't have indoor plumbing or coffee. Not my thing, but hey, you do you. This surge of medievalism both drove and coincided with the elevation of illuminated manuscripts throughout Europe in the mid to late 19th century. There are a couple of reasons for this, one of which was a little event known as the French Revolution, during which a lot of people got their heads cut off and people were vandalizing everything, especially churches. As a result, there was a push to transfer objects to museums and libraries in order to preserve them from these crowds. That included manuscripts. Thousands and thousands of old as heck manuscripts were being transferred from private institutions like churches and monasteries into public collections throughout the country. Then, in the early 19th century, a little man known as Napoleon was going all over the damn place with his conquering army. And one of their favorite pastimes was stealing people's stuff, which they then sent back to France, creating another massive influx of objects into French museums and collections, including, say it with me now, manuscripts. And bada bing bada boom, manuscripts, specifically illuminated manuscripts, became an art form about which people actually gave a damn. Soon enough, collectors were frothing at the mouth to get their hands on some of these manuscripts. And by the mid to late 19th century, that popularity had spread beyond the art world into the domestic sphere, into homes. Painting illuminations, also sometimes called miniatures, emerged as an appropriate and even desirable hobby of upper middle class ladies. One on par with playing piano, embroidering hankies, and, you know, not showing your ankles in public. To be clear, I'm not sure how many young women were making whole freaking manuscripts for funsies. I think Clotilde was probably pretty unique in that regard, but painting individual miniatures or copying existing ones was very popular. To the point where there were journals dedicated to the art form that ran yearly competitions to find the most accomplished amateur illuminator of the year. That brings us back to Mademoiselle Clotilde, who in 1896 took second place in such a competition. And it's clear that she continued to practice this craft, as ten years on she would go on to make the aforementioned whole freaking manuscript. Speaking of, if I had to choose one word to describe the Clotilde missile, it would be charming. In fact, it might be the most charming art object I have ever seen. Or, I guess, not seen because I've never been to Baltimore. The images are by far the best part of the manuscript. I think most people would say that about most illuminated manuscripts. But let's start with the text. Because it's interesting, kind of. Content-wise, the Clotilde Missal includes texts from all sorts of church masses, from the everyday stuff you hear in every mass to specific prayers and passages related to special days on the church's calendar. Clotilde wrote in both French and Latin using a beautiful semi-cursive Gothic script that, wait for it, I can actually read, which is more than I can say of the Book of Kells. While the text is very cool, the illuminations are where it's at. And as I said previously, at least one illumination appears on every single one of the book's 174 pages, plus a couple of bonus pages like the title page. Clotilde painted these illuminations using watercolor paint and the occasional washes of gold and silver. She favored bold, luscious, bright colors that contrast beautifully with the dark brown and even black ink of the text. One of the reasons why these colors stand out so vibrantly from the page is due to the fact that Clotilde prepared her pages by coating them in a thick layer of white lead. It proved a lovely surface on which to paint. However, lead is highly toxic, and even today, people who handle the Clotilde missile have to wear gloves, not to protect the manuscript, but rather to keep themselves safe from direct contact with its pages. There is an excellent one-minute clip on TikTok from the Schoenberg Institute that shows Schoenberg curator.porter paging through the book wearing said gloves. I was tickled pink to find that video, as it really gives you a sense of scale and color and feel, to a certain extent, of encountering the manuscript in person. I will link that on the podcast's website. Knowing this fact, though, adds something of a dark edge to the book, which is brimming with color and joy and imagination. The care and time that Clotilde put into these pages means that she spent hours and hours and hours in direct contact with a toxic substance. But I am not here to be a downer. I am here to celebrate this beautiful object, starting with its gorgeous title page featuring an illumination of the Madonna and Child. Those of you who saw the Instagram post announcing this episode will have seen a hybrid version of the title page and the coliphon mixed together. And I hope you appreciated it because it took me hours to make. Literally hours. Why am I like this? On this page, the Madonna and Child are set into a golden medallion that itself is situated in a square golden frame with leaded glass accents in the corners. Those leaded windows must have a few cracks in them, though, because grapevines emerge from two of the corners to meander across the page. Below the emblem of the Madonna and Child, Clotilde provides us with a title, simply Roman Missal. While the words themselves are simple and to the point, Clotilde supplies them with a sense of gravity by writing them in a big, bold, gothic script, including a very fancy capital M that harkens back to the illuminated manuscripts of old, which was precisely what she was doing. This title page really sets the tone for the rest of the manuscript, which stands as a testament not just to Clotilde's faith and her dedication to the Christian contents of the book, but also her sense of fun and whimsy. As much as I would like to, I obviously can't and won't go into every one of the manuscript's 174 pages, though I highly suggest that you go online and page through each and every one of them. Instead, I'm going to give you a little tour of my favorite illuminations appearing in the book. What might be my favorite illumination in the whole book is on page 8. The upper two-thirds of page 8 are text, specifically an excerpt from a letter of St. James. The lower third of the page is dedicated to an illumination of an open-air balcony overlooking a landscape. And in that balcony, there is a black cat with magnificent whiskers just sitting on the windowsill, taking it all in. It is a quiet moment of cuteness that actually isn't quiet at all, because beside this cat is a drummer who's dressed all fancy with feathers in his cap. What's he doing here? In truth, I never really look at him because I only have eyes for the cat. Sorry, drummer, bro, it happens. But as Lindley Herbert pointed out in her essay about the missile, this drummer is an exact quotation of one appearing in a print by Albrecht Durer, who was one of the greatest artists of the Renaissance. And that is something Clotilde does throughout the manuscript. She quotes famous prints either by or done after some of the greatest artists of the 1400 and 1500s, including the likes of Hans Holbein, Leonardo da Vinci, and the aforementioned Albrecht Durr. Sometimes she does full-page illuminations of an entire print. Other times she turns into an art historical magpie and just pulls out random little details from a larger print, which is what she does here with the drummer on page 8. The final thing that really catches my eye when I'm looking at this particular illumination is the glass windows that partially enclose the balcony. That's because they aren't plain glass windows or even stained glass windows. Instead, Clotilde depicts crown glass, which look like someone took the bottom of a bunch of Coke bottles and made them into a window. In fact, when I was trying to figure out what these were called, I literally Googled Coke bottle windows and they came right up. Fun fact, Coca-Cola came out in 1886, when Clotilde was just eight. And I would like to think that she drank some. The next of my favorites is on page 39, which is a little half-page illumination of a tiny man who kind of looks like a three-musketeer who is dumping out a gigantic bottle of ink. It's almost as big as him. It is an illumination that seemingly has nothing to do with the text around it. It's just fun. I personally like to think that she might have dribbled some ink on the page that she had to cover up and came up with this cute little illumination. Then again, maybe she just wanted to paint something whimsical. Chase your joy, people. As we move on, I want to draw your attention to page 41, which begins a section dedicated to the Nativity of Christ. Here Clotilde creates a kind of title page for this section in the form of a torn, shriveling piece of paper that she's pasted into the book. Except she hasn't pasted it into the book, she just makes it look like that through her mad painting skills. This kind of vignette in painting is often referred to as a tromp-loy or a trick of the eye, and it's something that artists have been doing forever. Not only is this delightful, but it also showcases her talent. Whether or not you find these Tromp-Loy vignettes, quote unquote, believable, they are super hard to do. And she had the audacity to give it a go. Another page that really showcases Clotilde's talent is page 64, where we encounter a knight on horseback. The reason I love this illumination is the fact that Clotilde paints the horse head on. It's like we're standing face to face with this horse, and it actually looks like a horse, which makes Clotilde better at painting animals than like 96.7% of all Renaissance painters. Not only is it hard to paint animals, and anything, really, but that perspective is so tricky to get right, and she nails it. The knight on horseback is also very charming, with him or potentially her decked out in detailed armor, including a decorative helmet with wings. But it's the horse that steals the show. Staying with the subject of perhaps Lady Knights, one of the most charming illuminations in the book is on pages 94 and 95. Page 94 is a whole page illumination of Joan of Arc on horseback. And we know it's Joan of Arc because it's labeled. But Joan of Arc isn't the only female knight that appears on these two pages, because directly opposite on page 95 is a young female knight holding not a sword, not a gun, not a glass of wine. She holds a book, one with a reddish brown cover. Lindley Herbert has made an excellent argument about how this figure may just be Clotilde painting herself in the guise of Joan of Arc. But instead of a sword, Clotilde chooses to. Brandish her book. I like that theory, and I'm gonna tell myself it's true. My favorite section of the manuscript starts on page 105, where Clotilde dedicates an entire page to the section's title, The Commemoration of the Dead, aka the Dancing Skeleton section. In these pages, we once again get ample evidence that Clotilde really knew her art history. Many of the illuminations in this section are direct quotations of the wood block prints Hans Holbein designed in 1538, illustrating the dance macabre, or the dance of death. This was a very popular Christian allegory meant to remind the living that, yeah, having a heartbeat is great and everything, but eventually your body's gonna be worm kibble, and your soul will have to face its maker. So you best live your life accordingly. Holbein's images show death in the form of skeletons, confronting a variety of people at different points in their lives, and Clotilde translates that beautifully into her manuscript. From an illumination of a noblewoman being visited by skeletons in her bed, to a full-page illumination on 112, in which a skeleton wearing the cloak of the Grim Reaper rings the bells of a church, finishing the duties of the old man in the armchair behind him, who has fallen into the eternal sleep of death. The section commemorating the dead ends with another full-page illumination, which shows a well-dressed woman sitting in a garden contemplating the white fluff of a dandelion gone to seed. One puff of air would send those seeds scattering into the air, each one of them holding the potential of future life. Fittingly, a skeleton creeps in the bushes behind her, contemplating the woman in the same way that she contemplates the dandelion. The symbolism is clear. But Clotilde drives it home by painting words into the golden frame that surround the scene, famous words that are often seen in catacombs and crypts. Hodie mihi cras tibi, memento homo quia pulvis est. My turn today, yours tomorrow. Remember, man, that you are dust. The pages honoring the commemoration of the dead are followed by the marriage mass. From mortality to marriage. I like to think that's a commentary, but that's probably just me. This section is an excellent example of how the images that Clotilde selected for the book are more thematic than illustrative. This section is teeming with images of couples and courtship in family life, including many images of motherhood. The degree to which Clotilde was embracing medievalism is also very overt in this section. All of the costumes and set design, if you will, are very much a la the Middle Ages, or rather a bejeweled idealization of such times. Whether or not Clotilde actually thought the Middle Ages was this rosy, happy time is besides the point. Given that she painted Joan of Arc in the book, who was famously burnt at the stake, my guess is that Clotilde knew the score. But this book and the images it contains are not reality. It's escapism in the guise of the medieval. Even today, we romanticize the hell out of past times. And that's exactly what she does here. It's like she was seeing life not through rose-colored glasses, but rather stained glass windows. The outcome is a series of stunning illuminations that paint a vivid picture of a more civilized romantic time, one in which lovers were happy and where mothers lived long enough to see their children grow up. The next section is dedicated to Vespers, or the Mass dedicated to evening prayer. My favorite illumination in this section is on page 135, where in the upper right hand corner, a very fat and fancy man with an epic mustache makes eyes at a very full glass of white wine. We're talking in airplane pour. Below him, a banner declares, good wine gladdens a person's heart, which is a phrase with which I heartily agree. Why is this image here in a section on the Vespers? I don't know, but I think it's great. There's actually quite a bit of wine imagery happening in this section, which is making me thirsty. The book ends officially on page 172, where there is yet another image of the Madonna in Child, in a large banner reading, Fini. Finished. That is followed by the aforementioned colophon on page 173, which holds Clotilde's declaration of authorship as well as her presumed self-portrait. The very final illumination in the book is a small one in the smack dab center of page 174, which isn't technically numbered, but it's more like back matter. On that page, a very merry gentleman, in an exceptionally eccentric outfit, sits jauntily on a box. Below him is a banner bearing a single word, Gaudiemus. We celebrate. It is a fitting end to a book that contains such ample evidence of the joy that Clotilde took in life, in her faith, and above all, in her art. Gaudiemus, indeed. Following the completion of her masterwork in 1906, we don't know what happened to Clotilde. We do know that she died in Nice, France on May 6, 1931, at the age of 52. She was survived by two sisters and their families. Clotilde herself appears to never have married nor mothered children. Clotilde's body was returned home, where she was buried between her paternal grandparents at a cemetery just outside of Molsheim. She shares a grave with her paternal aunt, who died two years before Clotilde was even born. While aunt and niece never met in their lifetimes, their bones have lain in rest together for nearly a hundred years, which puts new weights on the words Clotilde once painted in her manuscript. My turn today, yours tomorrow. In a way, that saying sums up how I feel about the book, and not in a bad way or a sad way. In fact, quite the opposite. I take great comfort in the idea that the things that we make can become tangible memories of our lives and testaments to the fact that we were once here. Just as Clotilde once held the Prince of Renaissance artists in her hands, we now hold her book in ours. Metaphorically, of course, and if literally, remember, wear gloves. The fact that this book continues to exist is pretty damn miraculous, though in a different way than, say, the Book of Kells, which, yes, miraculously survived a thousand years. But the clot-tealed missile was never thought to have been made or owned by a saint. It wasn't a treasured object of an entire community generation after generation. It is a small personal item created by a young woman for herself. A demographic that the world doesn't always treat with the respect and dignity that they deserve, least of all in the art world. Speaking of, Flotilde's missile emerged onto the art market in Amsterdam in the early 2000s. Where it was before that is a mystery, at least to me. It eventually made its way to London and then Chicago, or possibly New York, not sure which, where it was purchased by a company specializing in rare books and manuscripts. The Walters Art Museum in Baltimore purchased the book in 2016, thanks in no small part to the advocacy of Lindley Herbert to acquire the item, and of course to the funds provided to the museum to purchase it by the W. Alton Jones Foundation. To my knowledge, this is Clotilde Coulot's only known work, the only other material vestige of her life beyond the bones that lay behind a cold slab of colorless marble bearing her name. To close, I want to read the first sentence of the catalog entry from when the Clotilde Missile was sold in 2016. For that, Sandra Hinman opened the entry with quote, Forgotten today, Clotilde Coulot was responsible for the writing and illuminating of this enchanting manuscript. End quote. Needless to say, Clotilde Coulot is no longer forgotten. I personally haven't stopped thinking about her since Lindley Herbert's wonderful conference paper in 2020, and I hope to someday be able to see her manuscript in person. Until then, I will continue to think fondly about this missile and its maker. And I hope you will too. That is all I have for you today on the Clotiled Missile. Since I am already well over the 30 minutes I allot for mini sodes, I am going to cut it off here with one final shout out to Lindley Herbert, Sandra Hindman, and Gianfranco Malafarina. Other sources consulted and any images related to the episode will be on the website. Stuffaboutthingspodcast.com. The usual thanks go out to hooksounds.com and freemusicarchive.org for providing the royalty free music featured in the episode. As always, don't forget to look at something beautiful today. A la próxima.