The Visitation of St Elizabeth to the Virgin Mary, miniature on a leaf from a Book of Hours, Use of Rome, in Latin [France (Paris), c.1410]

single leaf, 175x123mm, vellum, miniature for Lauds in the Hours of the Virgin, 18 lines, 85x58mm, verso with illuminated two-line initial and outer border, slightly cockled, small smudges to the Virgin’s mantle and the diapered background to the right, framed

The precisely drawn small faces, pale flesh tones and stippling technique of the landscape are typical of the hand of the EGERTON MASTER who painted this miniature and the following lot. The artist was named after a Book of Hours in the British Library with the shelfmark Egerton 1070. He may have been Netherlandish by birth, but his known activity starts in Paris where he collaborated with many of the most important manuscript illuminators of the early 15th century, notably the Mazarine Master, as well as the Master of the Brussels Initials, an artist who came from Bologna to work in the French capital. Christine de Pizan, one of the most famous medieval female authors, asked the Egerton Master to illuminate three presentation copies of a work she composed in 1409-1410 on seven allegorized psalms.