Psalter, in Latin, illuminated manuscript on vellum

Estimate

3,000 - 5,000 GBP

bidding is closed

Description

44 leaves (one fifteenth-century), 170mm. by 123mm., a fragment only, not consecutive, mostly from the second half of the Psalms, old foliation extends to ‘212’, 17 lines, ruling faint, written-space 122mm. by 80mm., written in dark brown ink in a gothic liturgical hand, illuminated initials and line-fillers throughout, versal initials in burnished gold on blue and pink grounds with white tracery, line-fillers in leafy designs on blue, pink and orange with white heightening and burnished gold, including running hounds, fish, dragons, etc., forty-five large illuminated initials, the initials 2 lines high with branching ivyleaf extensions into the margins, initials sometimes enclosing dragons, human faces (fols.1r and 15v), a grotesque in a hood (fol.34r), a bird (fol.4r), a rabbit (fol.4v), etc., some early corrections to the text, fol.42 (with part of the Litany) from a French manuscript of c.1460, many signs of use, thumbed, some illumination rubbed, outer extremities of illuminated extensions sometimes cropped, most pages sound, nineteenth-century (probably English) black morocco, marbled endleaves, red edges, in a fitted blue cloth case, title gilt

Catalogue Note

The text is from the Psalms, Canticles and Litany, including invocations of Saints Lambert (Liège), Rumbold (Brabant, especially Mechlin), Gaugeric (Cambrai, Arras, etc.) and Amand (Tournai, etc.). There is a seventeenth-century name, apparently Georgine Rocher, on fol.14r. The book was in England by the mid-nineteenth century. It was sold in these rooms, 12 July 1971, lot 49 (“The property of a gentleman”), and again, 6 December 1971, lot 34, to Maggs.