Lot 21

Leaf from a Book of Hours with ladybirds and a dragonfly, illuminated manuscript on vellum [France (probably Paris, possibly Tours), c.1520-30]

Estimate

6,000 - 8,000 GBP

bidding is closed

Description

Vellum

single leaf, 112mm. by 63mm., with a full border strewn with a realistic pea-plant sprout with two pods and a soft and finely executed flower, with three vivid red ladybirds, a blue dragonfly, an orange butterfly and a bluebottle, all on a liquid gold ground, another ladybird and green shoots within the 3-line blue initial (opening Compline for the Hours of the Virgin, 'Converte nos ...'), 21 lines of text with 16 other initials in black and liquid gold, line fillers of sprigs or cords with baguettes in liquid gold, text frame on verso in similar cord joined at base, small flake from one of pea-plant's leaves and small traces of glue at top of verso from previous mount, else excellent condition

Provenance

Provenance: from a Book of Hours which belonged to Baron Jerome Pichon (1812-1896); Sam Fogg, cat.14 (1991), no.39; afterwards broken up. Leaves were described in Pirages, cat. 49, nos.88-95. Other leaves from the same manuscript are described in S. N. Fliegel, The Jeanne Miles Blackburn Collection of Manuscript Illuminations, Cleveland Museum of Art, 1999, pp.71-2, no.69.

Catalogue Note

The manuscript is from the workshop of the so-called 1520s Hours Masters, now identified as that of Noel Bellemare and his assistants. Bellemare was born in Antwerp but is principally documented in Paris, where he lived on the Pont Notre-Dame. He was designated 'Maître Peintre' in the 1530s. The workshop produced some of the finest naturalistic studies of flowers and insects ever painted up to that time. Unlike the Netherlandish 'scatter borders', those of the French court usually included whole plants, apparently growing around the pages, like the pea plant here, so naturalistic that it appears to have attracted insects to the page.