Book of Hours, fragment of the Office of the Dead, in Latin, illuminated manuscript on vellum [northern France (Rouen), c.1500-10]

31 leaves (plus three modern vellum flyleaves at each end), 172mm. by 130mm., fragment, collation: i-iii⁸, iv⁷ (i added, vii-viii wanting), single column, 16 lines in a gothic bookhand, written space 100mm. by 65mm., capitals highlighted in yellow, rubrics in red, one- to 2-line initials and line-fillers in gold on red and blue grounds with white penwork decoration, 3-line initials in blue on burnished gold grounds filled with ivy leaves in red and blue with white penwork decoration, two three-quarter page miniatures with full borders formed of coloured acanthus, flowers and strawberries against vellum and gold grounds, all text pages with partial borders, lead-white and silver of miniature on fol.1r oxidised, small pigment losses and stains in sky of miniature on fol.25v, borders occasionally slightly rubbed, overall in good condition, bound in a fine nineteenth-century neo-gothic leather binding tooled with floral sprays and geometric bosses, gilt-tooled inside boards, stamped inside upper cover by the Paris bookbinders Victor Champs (1844-1923) and Jean Stroobants (1856-1922), modern pencil number ‘7268’ on flyleaf

This fragment of the Office of the Dead correctly opens with a miniature of a Funeral Service, but the other miniature with the Visitation of the Virgin to St. Elisabeth is from the Hours of the Virgin for Lauds. It is from the same original manuscript, but has been misbound into this section. This second miniature is the work of Robert Boyvin, who is known from surviving accounts of the redecoration of the palace of the Rouen archbishops at Gaillon under Georges d’Amboise. In 1503, d’Amboise ordered from Boyvin a copy of Seneca’s Epistolae, which can be identified with an extant manuscript in Paris (BnF., lat.8551: Avril and Reynaud, Manuscrits à Peintures en France, 1993, pp.413-14). Typical for this artist are the calm and emotionless pale faces of figures set into stereotypical landscapes. The careful execution and the rich use of gold make this miniature a fine example of the artist’s work, whose style dominated Rouen illumination from c.1500 for about four decades.