Lot 27

Book of Hours, Use of Paris, in Latin and French, illuminated manuscript on vellum [northern France (doubtless Rouen), c.1475]

Estimate

4,000 - 6,000 GBP

bidding is closed

Description

Vellum

149 leaves, 162mm. by 113mm., apparently complete, single column, ruled in pink for 16 lines of late gothic script in brown ink, rubrics in red, one- and 2-line initials in gold on burgundy and blue grounds, with line-fillers to match, larger initials in grey with white penwork on burgundy grounds and enclosing sprays of foliage, nearly all leaves with border panels of acanthus-leaves and flowers on plain vellum or dull-gold grounds (important text openings with borders on three sides), four small miniatures in rectangular frames (fols.13r, 14v, 16r, 17v), five three-quarter page miniatures (fols.25r, 83r, 86v, 90r, 107r), with some small chipping to that on 13r and 86v and the face of the Christ's torturer on 83r deliberately scratched, slight thumbing to edges of some leaves and small holes in fol.42 and 99 with no loss to text, else excellent, early seventeenth-century olive morocco over pasteboards profusely gilt tooled with double initials 'lambda' and 'B' (see below), scuffed at corners and becoming cracked and weak at hinges, else good

Provenance

From the substantial library of Léon de Bouthillier, comte de Chavigny (1608-52), foreign minister to Louis XIII of France: his gilt-tooled binding (using stamps recorded in Guigard, Nouvel armorial du bibliophile, 1890, ii, pp.84-5); and perhaps with his notes (seventeenth-century corrections on fol.20v and 21v). Ampleforth MS.190 (previously 72): J. Stevenson, HMC, Second Report, 1871, p.109, no.11; and Ker, Medieval Manuscripts in British Libraries, 1977, II, p.33.

Catalogue Note

text

The text comprises a Calendar (fol.1r); Gospel Readings (13r); Obsecro te (for male use: "famulo tuo" on 20v) and O intemerata; Hours of the Virgin, with Matins (25r), Lauds (46v), Prime (56v), Terce (61v), Sext (65r), None (68v), Vespers (72r), Compline (78r); Hours of the Holy Cross (83r); Hours of the Holy Spirit (86v); Penitential Psalms (90r) with a Litany; Office of the Dead (107r); prayers in French (142v), including the Quinze Joyes and the Sept Requêtes.

illumination

While the smaller miniatures and border decoration are more recognisably Rouen in origin, the large miniatures are by a follower of the influential court artist Jean Bourdichon (1457-1521), echoing his close and detailed studies of figures with large oval pale faces and cascades of fine golden hair.

The miniatures comprise: (1) fols.13r-17v, four square miniatures of the Evangelists writing (each approximately 40mm. by 40mm.); (2) fol.25r, the Annunciation to the Virgin, as she sits reading from an open book before an elaborate compartmented stone window; (3) fol.83r, Christ carrying the Cross as a Roman soldier raises his arm to strike him; (4) fol.86v, Pentecost; (5) fol.90r, Bathsheba, naked apart from a gold necklace, bathing in an ornamental pool; (6) fol.107r, a hermit-saint holding a rosary and a book, kneeling before a corpse wrapped in a shroud.