Chevalier's Book of Hours, though exquisite in
delicacy, are too minute for much characterisation--is, even if we
accept it as the original from Fouquet's hand, an overcleaned work in
the Museum at Antwerp.[40] This, or the original painting, formed a
wing of the so-called diptych painted to adorn the tomb of Etienne
Chevalier and his wife in the Cathedral of Melun, the other wing--now
in the Royal Museum, Berlin--representing Etienne Chevalier himself,
in the attitude of prayer, his patron saint, St. Stephen, beside him.
There seems reason, however, to suppose that this offering of
Etienne's was in fact a triptych, and that the missing wing pictured
his young wife, then lately dead (1452). If this was so, Etienne and
his wife would have appeared in adoration on either side of the Queen
of Heaven, here personated by Agnes Sorel, thus bringing the panel
with Etienne's portrait into harmony with the central panel, which
otherwise it fails to be.

[40] Du Fresne de Beaucourt, _Hist. de Charles VII_, t. iv.
p. 171, note 2.

[Illustration: _Musee de Chantilly._

BOOK OF HOURS OF ETIENNE CHEVALIER.

_To face page 162._]

Of the miniatures at Chantilly, the whole series of which forms a most
tender and rare tribute to wife and friend, only brief mention can
here be made of those concerning Agnes. The most simple and beautiful
in sentiment and design is that of the _Annunciation_, in which the
seated Virgin, in the likeness of Agnes Sorel, with bowed head
receives the angel's message. The scene is laid in a Gothic chapel
(perhaps the Sainte Chapelle with slight adaptations to suit the
artist's fancy),[41] with statues of the Prophets all around, and
Moses, holding the Books of the Law, as the central figure of the
group. This assemblage of Old Testament seers certainly typified the
Old dispensation, whilst the Annunciation prefigures the New, and to
us the whole may not unfitly form an allegory of the new order which
Agnes Sorel was to help to bring about. In another miniature--the
_Visit of the Magi_--Charles the Seventh, accompanied by his
Scottish guard, and with the Castle of Loches in the background,
himself kneels as one of the kings before the Virgin, here also
represented in the likeness of Agnes. And so on, throughout the
series, in many of the scenes of the Virgin's life we find her bearing
the features of Agnes until an older and sadder type becomes necessary
in the _Crucifixion_, the _Entombment_, and