Hymnal, in Latin, illuminated manuscript on vellum [Germany, early fifteenth century]

34 leaves (plus one original vellum endleaf at front), 304mm. by 218mm., complete, collation: i¹⁰, ii⁸, iii¹⁰, iv⁶, 20 lines in dark brown ink in an angular late gothic bookhand (written space: 215mm. by 155mm.), with music on 4-line red staves (rastrum: 15mm.), capital letters with red strokes, rubrics in red, blue, green and orange, one-line initials and line-fillers in same, nineteen large initials in colours, some illuminated with burnished gold baubles and panels, on coloured grounds, others sprouting flowers into the margins (fols.1r, 2v, 4r, 6r, 12r, 17v, 18v, 20r, 21v, 23r, 24r, 24v, 25r, 25v, 26r, 26v, 27r, 28r and 30v), seven historiated initials with the Christ Child holding a Cross, half-length portraits of Christ, the Virgin and Child, the Man of Sorrows peeping out from behind an initial, the Virgin and a full-length figure of Christ Preaching (fols.7v, 10r, 13v, 15v, 18r (x2) and 27v), all with thick burnished gold halos and crowns, one stave with music and text added to fol.18r by a seventeenth or eighteenth-century hand, a few spots, else in excellent condition with wide and clean margins, seventeenth-century vellum binding over rough pasteboards lined with canvas and with central panels of painted green arabesques, pasteboards chipped and frayed with wormholes

This is a large and handsome illuminated Hymnal in a remarkable state of preservation. It was made for public recitation in a German monastery: with instructions for the “dyaconus” on fol.28r and the Choir on fol.30v. Its initials are in the style commonly known as Nonnenarbeiten, which refers to works produced by cloistered women for their own use (J. Hamburger, Nuns as Artists, 1997). Characteristic are figures with pale faces, dark button eyes, rosy red cheeks and pursed lips,  which were produced in convents across the German-speaking world. Many initials here are within striking borders of black lines punctuated with white dots which are also found on a cutting with three female saints, perhaps from Alsace (Princeton University, Art Museum, Y1031, reproduced by Hamburger, fig.7). The figures here also connect this volume to a sub-genre of this style tentatively associated with convents in the Upper or Middle Rhineland (cf. the Oettingen-Wallerstein Choirbook: J. Günther,  Brochure 14, Timeless Treasures, no.10).