Lot 16

St. John seated on Patmos writing his Gospel, on a leaf from a Book of Hours, illuminated manuscript on vellum

Estimate

3,000 - 5,000 GBP

bidding is closed

Description

a single leaf, 154mm. by 102mm., full-page miniature of St. John with a liquid gold halo seated on a grassy hillock writing on a scroll, all before a watery landscape with islands topped with medieval towns and a wide open sky, all within an architectural frame on the base of which an eagle stands wings open supporting an open scroll containing a 3-line initial 'I' (opening 'In principio erat ...', John 1:1, from the Gospel Lessons in a Book of Hours) in dull gold supported by two cherubs, and with 3 lines of text in dark brown ink in an elaborate lettre bâtarde, 15 lines in same on verso, in good condition perhaps with some later retouching, loosely laid down on nineteenth-century card

Catalogue Note

The seated figure of John on the grassy island is remarkably close to that in other Books of Hours attributed to the workshop of Jean Colombe (active c. 1460-98), and on occasion the hand of the artist himself. A number of features are exact matches, including the posture of the figure, the colour and drapery of his clothing, his oval face painted in porcelain-white with its contours picked out with single-hair brushstrokes, and with hair flowing over his shoulders. The figure of the eagle and the way its mouth draws up at the end as if smiling can also be paralleled in the St. John miniature in a Book of Hours attributed to Jean Colombe, and now in a private collection in Germany. The artwork here may well be that of the artist himself, and if not is apparently that of a gifted associate. Jean Colombe was one of the most prolific French illuminators of the second half of the fifteenth century (see J. Plummer, The Last Flowering: French Painting in Manuscripts 1420-1530, 1982; and F. Avril & N. Reynaud, Les Manuscrits à Peintures en France 1440-1520, 1993, pp. 326-37). He was a native of Bourges, and the present work (or its inspiration) almost certainly derives from the period of his life spent there, producing large numbers of such books as commissions for the local aristocracy. Through these works he attracted the attention of Queen Charlotte of Savoy, wife of Louis XI, and from 1486 he served as the official illuminator to the Savoy court.