The Communion of the Apostles 

Around 1411-1416, the Limbourg brothers created this page with tempera, gold leaf, and ink on vellum. Think about what it would take to produce this small, intricate image. Vellum, or calfskin, needs extensive preparation before it’s ready to be painted. The making of pigments was itself a specialist craft, and grinding these by hand to create paint would have been laborious. The patient application of gold leaf also required great skill. Although this is a devotional image, it’s also a testament to conspicuous consumption. Gold was the ultimate luxury good, and ultramarine pigment, made from the semi-precious stone lapis lazuli, was nearly as valuable. Its use would have been a demonstration of the patron’s wealth. The fact that the Limbourg brothers made multiple books, not just unique masterpieces, indicates that there was a market for these kinds of luxury items at the time. These materials and the intensive labor that went into them are key to understanding the cultural and economic significance of this manuscript.