The Rohan Societe Anonyme: A Study in Collective Creativity

Past scholarship on the Rohan workshop, one among several early fifteenth-century French manuscript production centers, focused on stylistic and iconographic examination of the miniatures with a view to isolating the contributions of the Rohan Master, the most exceptional artist associated with the production center, defining the workshop style, and dating the manuscripts. This dissertation investigates the production methods adopted to prepare books of hours attributed to the Rohan workshop, determines the role of this organization, reassesses the traditional view of a workshop as an organization led by one stellar talent whose style was emulated by many assistants, and identifies the working methods and attitude toward creativity of its illuminators and decorators. The first chapter establishes that Rohan illuminators relied on visual sketches to compose their paintings. Although illuminators typically respected the iconographic roles of visual prototypes, they frequently altered sources, most significantly by imposing their own styles onto them; models were catalysts which guided illuminators in the formative stage of the creative process. The frequent recurrence of illuminations inspired by shared sources in Rohan manuscripts attributed to different painters indicates that prototypes were freely accessible, that the copying of models was a crucial step in the creative process; the traditional view equating imitation with artistic inferiority warrants reassessment. The second chapter establishes that Rohan illuminators frequently copied compositions developed in other production centers: sharing visual concepts was fundamental to the creative process in late medieval France, collaboration among workshops common, collective creativity the rule. The codicological method applied to Rohan manuscripts in the third chapter indicates that although decorators worked together in small production units, most respected prescribed decorative conventions to establish the decorative level and organize the contents of these prayer books; as the models were the core for illuminators, the decorative conventions were the core for decorators. It is argued in the fourth chapter that Rohan books of hours reflect three core styles and that the Rohan Master exerted little influence on other illuminators; the view that the Rohan Master was the pivotal figure in this workshop merits reconsideration. The Rohan workshop, then, was propelled and united by its visual models and decorative conventions and not by its most talented painter.