THE MASSACRE OF THE INNOCENTS, with the Flight into Egypt. Full-page coloured woodcut from a Book of Hours printed on vellum, Heures a l'usage de Rome, Paris: Gillet Hardouyn, c.1510 (Bohatta 913).
[Paris, c.1510]
222 x 142mm (leaf); 196 x 124mm (woodcut). The woodcut completely overpainted in colours and liquid gold and silver by a skilled illuminator, retaining the overall composition of the underlying print but varying in details. On the verso, 30 lines of printed text with full metalcut borders, liquid gold initials on red or blue grounds, ruled in red (the silver oxidised, traces of old mounting on verso).
The sumptuous Book of Hours from which this leaf was taken was part of a deluxe edition, printed on vellum and issued with its wood- and metalcut illustrations richly illuminated, probably in the shop of Germain Hardouyn, who was the brother of the printer and a skilled illuminator. This large cut of the Massacre of the Innocents appears twice in the edition, and most copies show the two instances of the picture with variations in the colour and differences in the details of the painted compositions (see, e.g., Pierre Bers, cat. 85, no 155, with colour illustrations of this cut as it appeared in the Henri Burton copy, sold at Christie's New York, 22 April 1994, lot 130).