Saint Jerome, full-page illuminated miniature from the Hours of Albrecht of Brandenburg, manuscript on vellum

a single leaf, 187 mm. by 134 mm., with a miniature 174 mm. by 123 mm., showing a cardinal kneeling on the floor of a church, his hat before him, gazing up at a Crucifix hung from a pillar beside a screen, set in the interior of a late Romanesque church apparently at the crossing, framed prayers or indulgences hung on the walls, two laymen in conversation in the distance, silver lattice windows beyond and above, within a gently arched compartment 135 mm. by 85 mm., full border of gold and rock crystal vases festooned and decorated with flowers and jewels, a cherub's head at the upper left, on a green ground, laid down on thick card, verso with the illuminated arms of the Marquess of Londonderry, 1856, in a moulded wooden frame

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Illuminated by Simon Bening.  From the Hours of Cardinal Albrecht of Brandenburg (1490-1545), archbishop and elector of Mainz, primate of Germany, humanist scholar, statesman, leader of the Catholic opposition to Martin Luther, art collector, patron of Dürer and Cranach.   The manuscript's full-page miniatures were all bought in Rome in 1856 by Frederick Stewart, fourth marquess of Londonderry (1805-1872), and they were framed with his arms on the verso, as here.  In the meantime the 2-volume manuscript itself was sold to William Waldorf Astor (1848-1919), and it re-emerged in Lord Astor's sale in our rooms, 21 June 1988, lot 65, and again in the Ritman sale in these rooms, 19 June 2001, lot 36.  The present miniature was probably originally in volume II, facing the opening of the suffrage to Saint Jerome on fol. 67r.

Many of the Londonderry leaves were later owned by Captain George Pitt-Rivers (1890-1966) and were sold in a single lot at Christie's, April 1929, lot 130, including "a kneeling prelate" (doubtless the present leaf), bought by the dealer Horace Buttery, who dispersed them.  Six of them, including "a cardinal", were sold in 1945 to H. M. Calman, of London.  It was subsequently acquired by Eric Korner.

The miniature is by Simon Bening (1483-1561), "the finest Bruges illuminator of the sixteenth century" (Kren, Renaissance Painting in Manuscripts, 1984, p. 69), "one of the last and greatest Flemish miniaturists" (Testa, Beatty Rosarium, 1986, p. 15), "the last great Flemish illuminator and the last exponent of the style of Flemish manuscript illumination" (Kren in Illuminating the Renaissance, 2003, p. 448).  Bening also painted for Cardinal Brandenburg the celebrated Prayerbook, now in the J. Paul Getty Museum (MS Ludwig IX.19).  The border here is by a second artist, who also collaborated with Bening in Victoria and Albert Museum, MS L. 39-1981, and in Stockholm K.B., MS A. 227.

The subject here is a tantalising one, for the kneeling figure has no halo.  The iconography is that of Saint Jerome, kneeling in prayer before a crucifix.  Is it Jerome, or is it Cardinal Albrecht of Brandenburg himself, or both?  Albrecht had himself painted by Cranach in 1525 as Jerome, in cardinal's robes, with a lion at his feet and the crucifix on the table (Darmstadt, Landesmuseum).  The present miniature probably faced the opening of the prayers to Jerome in the Book of Hours, as above, but there is also a stub in the manuscript facing the Brandenburg arms at the opening of volume I, and it might be, as suggested by Hindman, Lehman Collection, p. 111, that this was actually one panel of double frontispiece to the whole manuscript.  At very least we can assume that the cardinal identified more closely with this miniature than with any other in the book.  The fine architectural setting here anticipates the many Netherlandish church interiors of the seventeenth century.

Recent publications on the Londonderry miniatures from the Brandenburg Hours include S. Hindman, The Robert Lehman Collection, IV, Illuminations, New York, 1997, pp. 99-112, citing the present miniature on pp. 99, 110 (n. 13) and 111 (n. 24); S. Hindman and N. Rowe, eds., Manuscript Illumination in the Modern Age, Recovery and Reconstruction, 2001, pp. 239-40;  J. H. Marrow in The Cambridge Illuminations, ed. P. Binski and S. Panayotova, 2005, pp. 217-9, no. 97; and The Medieval Imagination, ed. B. Stocks and N. Morgan, Melbourne, 2008, pp. 180-83, no. 61.