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Harvesting Grapes in a Vineyard, miniature on a leaf from an illuminated Book of Hours, manuscript on vellum [southern Netherlands (perhaps Tournai), c.1500]
Estimate
3,000 - 5,000 GBP
bidding is closed
Description
- Vellum
single leaf, 105mm. by 74mm. with a full-page miniature of three vineyard labourers with baskets collecting ripe purple grapes from a cultivated trellis, the sign of Libra as a naked woman holding scales above them in the sky, within a dull-gold border with realistic flowerheads and two rotund birds, verso blank, some very minor smudging to Libra, else excellent condition, framed
Catalogue Note
Full page miniatures are not commonly found in Calendars, and this detailed example once accompanied the month of September in a Book of Hours. Eight leaves from this attractive manuscript appeared in Maggs, Bulletin 3, 1965, nos.33-40 (the present leaf as no.34), and another was sold in our rooms, 5 December 1989, lot 37. A manuscript evidently by the same artist (now Cambridge, Trinity College B.13.11: Arnould and Massing, Splendours of Flanders, 1993, cat.no.24) can be localised to Tournai, and this was most probably produced there as well.