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Details
FOUR SINGLE LEAVES AND TWO BIFOLIA from a Book of Hours, ILLUMINATED MANUSCRIPT ON VELLUM
[Paris, c.1450]
193 x 138. Sixteen lines written in black ink in a gothic bookhand between two verticals and 17 horizontals ruled in red, justification 100 x 65mm, rubrics in gold, text capitals touched yellow, NUMEROUS ILLUMINATED INITIALS with staves of pink or blue patterned with white with foliate infills on grounds of burnished gold, patterned line-endings, including daisies, on grounds of burnished gold, FIFTEEN FULL BORDERS with elegant branches of fruit, flowers and acanthus in blue, pink, red, green and liquid gold between vine leaves and disks in burnished gold on hairline tendrils (slight smudging to three borders).
The leaves come from an incomplete Book of Hours for the use of Rouen, (Sotheby's, London, 5 December 2000, lot 62). The pencilled foliation was done when the book was already fragmentary and misbound. The Office of the Virgin was the full office with nine lessons, not the usual Little Office with three: the seventh and ninth lessons open on ff.41 and 43 of the bifolia ff.41/44 and ff.42/43. Three single leaves, ff.79, 82 and 115, are from the Office of the Dead; the fourth leaf, f.129, was at the end of the volume, completing the very rare Hours of the Conception of Christ.
The two miniatures remaining in the book were by the Master of the Salisbury Breviary St Stephen, named from Paris, BnF, Ms lat.17294, who headed an independent workshop in Paris from the 1440s to the 1460s. In turning to Paris for a Rouen Hours, the patron secured work of exceptional refinement for an exceptionally lavish commission -- even the rubrics are gold. The inventive freedom seen in the curving rhythms of the borders, with their delicate interweavings of naturalistic and stylised plant forms, would give way c.1460 to more obviously structured border arrangements, as in the Hours by the Master in the J. Paul Getty Museum, Malibu, Ludwig Ms IX 6 (A. von Euw and J. Plotzek, Die Handschriften der Sammlung Ludwig, II, pp.103-114). (6)
[Paris, c.1450]
193 x 138. Sixteen lines written in black ink in a gothic bookhand between two verticals and 17 horizontals ruled in red, justification 100 x 65mm, rubrics in gold, text capitals touched yellow, NUMEROUS ILLUMINATED INITIALS with staves of pink or blue patterned with white with foliate infills on grounds of burnished gold, patterned line-endings, including daisies, on grounds of burnished gold, FIFTEEN FULL BORDERS with elegant branches of fruit, flowers and acanthus in blue, pink, red, green and liquid gold between vine leaves and disks in burnished gold on hairline tendrils (slight smudging to three borders).
The leaves come from an incomplete Book of Hours for the use of Rouen, (Sotheby's, London, 5 December 2000, lot 62). The pencilled foliation was done when the book was already fragmentary and misbound. The Office of the Virgin was the full office with nine lessons, not the usual Little Office with three: the seventh and ninth lessons open on ff.41 and 43 of the bifolia ff.41/44 and ff.42/43. Three single leaves, ff.79, 82 and 115, are from the Office of the Dead; the fourth leaf, f.129, was at the end of the volume, completing the very rare Hours of the Conception of Christ.
The two miniatures remaining in the book were by the Master of the Salisbury Breviary St Stephen, named from Paris, BnF, Ms lat.17294, who headed an independent workshop in Paris from the 1440s to the 1460s. In turning to Paris for a Rouen Hours, the patron secured work of exceptional refinement for an exceptionally lavish commission -- even the rubrics are gold. The inventive freedom seen in the curving rhythms of the borders, with their delicate interweavings of naturalistic and stylised plant forms, would give way c.1460 to more obviously structured border arrangements, as in the Hours by the Master in the J. Paul Getty Museum, Malibu, Ludwig Ms IX 6 (A. von Euw and J. Plotzek, Die Handschriften der Sammlung Ludwig, II, pp.103-114). (6)
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