Dévotions et représentations de l’Immaculée Conception dans les cours royales et princières du Nord de l’Europe (1380-1420)

Whilst the issue of the theological debate on the Immaculate Conception of the Virgin is well-known for the 15th century in France, the contemporary devotion of laymen for the feast of the Conception is not as much documented. Yet, from the time of Charles V of France, several sources indicate that Kings of France and their circle get interested by this new belief. When the Dominican Jean de Monzon preaches against the Immaculate Conception of the Virgin in the University of Paris in 1387, Charles VI decides to dismiss his dominican confessor and not to choose him any more in this order. Theologians in favour of the Immaculate Conception, such as Michel de Creney, Pierre d’Ailly or Jean Gerson, members of the secular clergy and trained in the College de Navarre in Paris, spread their influence at the French court in the beginning of the 15th century. If the context seemed to be at the royal court in favour of the new belief yet greatly disputed, were artists working for the King or his family encouraged to develop images representing the Immaculate conception of the Virgin? Several elements can make think so. A new iconographical cycle on the Virgin’s Infancy is created in Books of Hours commissioned by the powerful laymen of the time. It shows the episode of the Golden Gate linked to the Virgin’s Annunciation. The Virgin represented as the Woman of the Apocalypse is more and more painted, in manuscripts as well as in small devotional panels made for Jean de Berry or Louis d’Orléans. Those new themes seem to indicate, more by the connexion with the favourable context than by their intrisic meaning, that artists commissioned by the King or “Princes des Fleurs de Lys” created between 1380 and 1430 images representing the Immaculate Conception of the Virgin.