ST JOHN THE BAPTIST, illuminated by The Master of the Prayer Books of Around 1500: a full-page miniature with historiated border on a leaf from Hours of Archduchess Isabella Clara Eugenia, in Latin, illuminated manuscript on vellum [Southern Netherlands (Bruges), late 15th century]

ST JOHN THE BAPTIST, illuminated by The Master of the Prayer Books of Around 1500: a full-page miniature with historiated border on a leaf from Hours of Archduchess Isabella Clara Eugenia, in Latin, illuminated manuscript on vellum

[Southern Netherlands (Bruges), late 15th century]

a leaf, c. 135 × 95 mm, with a full-page miniature of St John the Baptist holding the Paschal Lamb on a book in his left hand and pointing to it, standing full-length in a clearing or in front of a wood, the lower border historiated with a scene of three men hunting, one of whose dogs are chasing birds on a river, the other two with lures, and birds of prey attacking water-fowl in the upper left border, the right border with flowers and butterflies in a typical Flemish scatter border, the recto (framed as the reverse) blank except for a collector's ink-stamp, a bold ‘V’ surmounted by a coronet with nine points; with slight creases at the upper right and lower left corners, the latter causing minor pigment loss, but generally in very good condition, the reverse with traces of adhesive mounting-tape; in a giltwood frame.

PROVENANCE

1. ARCHDUCHESS ISABELLA CLARA EUGENIA (1566–1633), wife of Archduke Albrecht (d. 1621).
2. Richard Kornelius Dammers (1762–1844), Bishop of Paderborn; bequeathed to his nephew:
3. Franz Heinrich Reusch (1825–1900), priest, and theologian at the University of Bonn.
4. Unidentified 19th-century German(?) Count, who also owned other miniatures from the same manuscript: with their ink-stamp on the reverse (de Kesel, 2001, fig. 4).
5. Heinrich Eisemann (1890–1972), German-born British book dealer: bought from him by:
6. Eric Korner (1893–1980), Austrian-born British banker: his MS 59; Korner sale in our rooms, 19 June 1990, lot 39; bought by:
7. The Boehlen Collection, Bern, MS 1417.

ILLUMINATION

A Book of Hours in Berlin (Kupferstichkabinett, 78 B 15), from which four full-page miniatures including the present are missing, has been studied in detail by Lieve de Kesel (2001), and she has shown where this miniature was formerly placed. The miniatures are painted by the so-called Master of the Prayer Books of Around 1500. A list of manuscripts attributed to him (almost all of which are Books of Hours, not Prayer Books) is provided by Georges Dogaer (1987), and a more in-depth discussion is provided by Scot McKendrick (2003), including many texts that are not devotional, including a Roman de la Rose, Monstrelet’s Chroniques, Vasco da Lucena’s translation of Quintus Curtius, poetical works by Virgil, and the Poèmes of Charles d’Orléans. McKendrick observes that the artist was responsible for painting ‘by far the most fascinating and high-quality manuscripts’ in the collections of Engelbert of Nassau (d. 1504) and King Henry VII (d. 1509) of England; other patrons were Margaret of Austria (d. 1530) (Vienna, ÖNB, cod. 1862), and Isabella of Castille (d. 1504). ‘What is clear is that in the last decade of the fifteenth century the Prayer Books Master established himself as one of the very few miniaturists in the southern Netherlands who could produce illustrations for deluxe manuscripts of a secular text that equaled in imagination and artistic accomplishment works from the two previous decades.’

REFERENCES

G. Dogaer, Flemish Miniature Painting in the 15th and 16th Centuries (Amsterdam, 1987), pp. 159–60

L. de Kesel, ‘Cambridge University Library Ms. Add. 4100: A Book of Hours Illuminated by the Master of the Prayer Books of circa 1500?’, Transaction of the Cambridge Bibliographical Society, X (1992), pp. 182–202 at 194.

L. de Kesel, ‘Almost Restored: The Hours of Archduchess Isabella Clara Eugenia, Berlin, Kupferstichkabinett, 78 B 15’, Jahrbuch Der Berliner Museen, 43 (2001), pp. 109–31; the present miniature at pp. 115, 122 fig. 12, 125, 126, 129, 130.

S. McKendrick, ‘Master of the Prayer Books of Around 1500’, in Illuminating the Renaissance: The Triumph of Flemish Manuscript Painting in Europe ed. by T. Kren and S. McKendrick (Los Angeles, 2003), pp. 394–406, citing the parent manuscript of the present miniature at 394.