Baboons at School, and a Baboon Hunting, scenes on two leaves from the Ghistelles Hours, illuminated manuscript on vellum

2 single leaves, each 120 mm. by 90 mm., each with 11 lines of text and illuminated initials and borders, (a) end of Terce and opening of Sext in the Hours of the Virgin, recto with bar border including a woman's head, and gold heads of a dragon and an ape, verso with a 6-line historiated initial of the Adoration of the Magi, 40 mm. by 40 mm., the Child seated on the Virgin's lap blessing them, one king kneeling, the others looking up at the star of Bethlehem, full border including two birds in the foliage, half-length figures of a woman with a book and a bishop with a crozier, a hunter blowing a horn and a hound chasing a hare which looks round anxiously, another hare hiding, a long-necked bird pecking at a grotesque, and a school of baboons, one dressed in red seated in the master's chair teaching a small baboon from a horn book, another baboon beating a naughty pupil on the bottom, watched approvingly by a standing baboon in prayer; and (b) end of Terce and opening of Sext in the Hours of the Cross, recto with a 6-line historiated initial of Christ carrying the Cross, 34 mm. by 34 mm., Christ in the purple robe stepping towards the right, led on by a soldier holding a hammer, Christ turning to look back at the Virgin behind him, helping with the Cross, full border including five birds in the foliage, a face of an old man with a moustache, a hound growling at a defiant hare, and a baboon dressed in red riding a galloping horse and blowing a gold horn as two hounds chase a stag with golden antlers, verso with 2-line initial enclosing a man's head, bar borders terminating with gold dragon heads, slight wear, in moulded gilt frames

Condition is described in the main body of the cataloguing where appropriate.
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Two of the finest known leaves of the Ghistelles Hours, probably illuminated for John III of Ghistelles (d. 1315), and his wife Margaret of Luxembourg.  The imperfect manuscript was broken up around 1950 by Heinrich Eisemann, who offered Eric Korner first choice of the leaves.  The manuscript is described by C. de Hamel in Manion, Vines and de Hamel, Medieval & Renaissance Manuscripts in New Zealand Collections, 1989, pp. 91-92, no. 72, citing the present leaves as "Private collection, SW7".  It was among the oldest known Books of Hours.  The manuscript's Calendar was sold in these rooms, 1 December 1998, lot 17, and is now in the Walters Art Museum, Baltimore, bought in honour of Lillian Randall, who had published two leaves of it in her Images in the Margins of Gothic Manuscripts, 1966, figs. 126 and 588.  Another leaf from the manuscript was lot 18 in the same sale (£17,000).  A text leaf was Pirages cat. 54 (2007), no. 9. 

The marginal images are glorious examples of the inverted world of medieval satire: the baboons at school, a baboon hunting, and a hare turning on a frightened hound.  Baboons or apes were the only monkeys known in medieval Europe.  According to the Bestiary texts, an ape is called 'simia' in Latin, because of its similarity to a human, and apes became the classic creatures of the medieval margin.  The verb 'babuinare' was used of manuscripts frivolously decorated in the late thirteenth century, 'baboonified'.