The Master of Claude de France, Christ carrying the Cross, full-page miniature from an illuminated manuscript on vellum [France (Tours), c.1515-20]

single leaf, 170mm. by 116mm. (trimmed at edges to remove parts of frame and outer border: most probably black with the distinctive cordelière of the Franciscans, note the faintest traces of black vellum on lower left-hand side), with a large rectangular miniature of Christ carrying the Cross, his eyes red and with tears streaming down his cheeks, as he is led to Golgotha by a procession of Roman soldiers in golden armour, the nearest carrying the three nails, as the Virgin and followers (all with single golden band halos in liquid gold) look on in despair, the gate of Jerusalem as a turreted city and the hill of Golgotha with tiny single-hair strokes picking out the procession up its winding flanks and the crosses on top, all within a realistic gilded frame, laid down on canvas and nineteenth-century paper, some tiny spots and scuffs and minor surface discolouration through dirt, small strips of paper glued to edges of frame of miniature during last framing (with some remnants still present), else in fresh and excellent condition, framed

This is a long-lost miniature from an opulent Book of Hours of breathtaking quality, produced by the Master of Claude de France in the first or second decade of the sixteenth century. Miniatures in his hand were once ascribed to the court-painter, Jean Bourdichon, but have now been securely re-attributed to him (C. Sterling, The Master of Claude, Queen of France, a newly defined miniaturist, 1975; N. Reynaud in Avril and Reynaud, Les Manuscrits à peintures en France, 1993, pp.319-21, no.176). "The painter's style is one of the utmost fineness and delicacy. A subtle range of soft purples, mauves and roses is applied in tiny, sometimes almost invisible brushstrokes" (R.S. Wieck, Late Medieval and Renaissance Illuminated Manuscripts, 1983, p.44; for continuity see also his 'The Prayer Book of Claude de France' in The Medieval Book, 2010, p.183). Six other full-page miniatures are recorded: SS. Anthony of Padua and Geneviève (Paris, Ecole nationale supérieure des Beaux-Arts, M.94-95), All Male Martyrs and All Franciscan Saints (sold in our rooms, 2 December 1997, lot 30, for £41,100, and now in the collection of Frances Beatty and Allen Adler, New York), St. Luke (exhibited in Paris in 1904 alongside that of St. Mark, and re-emerging in Les Enluminures, Cat.15, France 1500, no.35; the St. Mark as yet untraced), and to these should be added the miniature of the Mocking of Christ offered in Les Enluminures, Illuminations, 2001, no.11 (trimmed to the edges of its frame like the present miniature). A case has been made for the connection of these miniatures to a Calendar from a dismembered Book of Hours (now Morgan Library and Museum, M.1171), and they may well be the remnant of a single volume representing the artist's mature oeuvre. Sterling proposed that the parent volume of the present miniature was made for Anne of Brittany (1477-1514), wife of Charles VIII (1491) and Louis XII (1499), and the most important royal manuscript patron since the Duc de Berry.

Most recently, Reynaud has drawn parallels between these miniatures and the Prayer Book of Claude de France (now Morgan Library, M.1166, a gift of Mrs Alexandre Rosenberg), noting the influence of Jean Bourdichon on the artist. The present miniature consolidates these impressions by utilising a composition and figures which have become hallmarks of Bourdichon's hand (cf. R. Limousin, Jean Bourdichon, 1954, pls.17, 109 and 112, and Kren and Evans, A Masterpiece Reconstructed: the Hours of Louis XII, 2005, fig.1.11). The two artists were probably closely affiliated, and probably the Master of Claude de France was Bourdichon's student or even a member of his family. Certainly, he seems to share many aspects of his painting technique and had access to his workshop-patterns.