Lot 18

The Presentation of Christ in the Temple, full-page miniature on a leaf from a large illuminated Book of Hours, manuscript on vellum [Spain, second half of fifteenth century]

Estimate

5,000 - 7,000 GBP

bidding is closed

Description

Vellum

single leaf, 225mm. by 155mm., with a full-page miniature within an architectural frame with a jewelled arch adorned with pearls, enclosing the Virgin and followers dressed in sumptuous robes heightened with liquid gold designs, as she hands the Child to the priest (wearing a bishop's mitre and a cope), within a lavish gothic interior with a golden altar, a golden canopy with jewels and a ceiling painted to resemble the night sky, three-quarter frame of blue flowers and patterns heightened with liquid gold on burnished gold ground, and profuse border of acanthus-leaf sprays with bezants, enclosing a winged putti with a club, a bearded warrior with a shield and club, an angel blowing a horn, a bird pecking at a weasel-like drollery with a bearded human face, a peacock and two other birds, laid down on card, some small flaking from faces of Virgin, the Child and one of their followers, else excellent condition

Provenance

Provenance: Mortimer Brandt (1905-1993), his no.1294-6; published in H. Bober, The Mortimer Brandt Collection of Medieval Manuscript Illuminations, 1970, pp.17-19, no.6.

Catalogue Note

"The setting and the figures show strong traces of Flemish influence which permeated Spanish painting in this century. The very density and the crowding of figures, ornament and detail, again suggest characteristics often observed in Spanish miniatures" (Bober, p.19). A close comparison of the style of both the borders and the miniature can be made with the frontispiece of a copy of the Institutions of Nebrija (now Madrid, Bib. National, Sign.Vit.17-1; Bordona, Exposición de Códices Miniados Españoles, 1939, no.98, pl.61) made in western Spain in the fifteenth-century, and they may well be by the same artist.