212 leaves (plus 2 modern paper endleaves and one original vellum endleaf at front, and 2 modern paper endleaves at back), bound too tightly to collate, but with cancelled blanks at end of the Mass of the Virgin and end of Terce in the Hours of the Virgin, and wanting single leaves once between fols. 31 and 32, from end of Matins in Hours of Virgin, and from the opening of Terce (the latter with a miniature), the Passion Readings here within Matins in the Hours of the Virgin perhaps misbound in wrong place, the miniatures and their facing decorated leaves all on singletons, text in single column of 14 lines of a late gothic bookhand, red rubrics, one-line initials in blue with red penwork or gold with black penwork, larger initials in gold on blue and dark pink grounds, 15 leaves with large initials in blue or pink enclosing sprays of coloured acanthus leaves on burnished gold grounds, these with thin text frames of gold and coloured bars and full borders of similar acanthus leaves and single-line foliage terminating in coloured seedpods, fruit and gold bezants, 14 full-page arch-topped miniatures, within thin gold frames and full borders as before, marks on first few leaves of rust from early clasp once fixed there, miniature of funeral somewhat scuffed (perhaps from ritual rubbing), other miniatures with some craquelure to gold and paint flaking in places, some gold elements of outer borders oxidised, some slight rubbing, discolouration and cockling to a few leaves throughout, a few leaves with small natural flaws (with apparently contemporary repairs) and last leaf frayed at lower outermost corner (with losses to blank margins there), trimmed at upper and outer vertical edges (with affect to edges of decorated borders there), overall in fair and presentable condition, 92 by 79mm.; bound in modern green velvet over pasteboards, preserving 3 earlier silver cornerpieces, green marbled paper doublures
Provenance:
1. Written and illuminated for the wealthy Flemish couple, most probably from Bruges, who appear separately kneeling in the corner of the miniatures of the Crucifixion (a young man dressed in black, with a banderole emerging from his mouth) and the Virgin and Child (a young woman in a pink dress and a black conical hat with a see-through veil, with a banderole emerging from her mouth: ""O mater dei memento mei"").
2. By the 18th century the book was in Italian-speaking hands, and had explanatory inscriptions added before its major hours, either directly into blank space preceding each miniature or apparently on inserted paper leaves in the same place (these detectable through the offset of the inscriptions on the next page).
3. 19th- or early 20th-century dealers' marks on endleaves showing the book once again in the Low Countries by that date.
4. Acquired by the current owner from Henri Godts of Brussels in 2009.
Text:
This volume comprises: a Calendar; the Hours of the Cross; the Hours of the Holy Spirit; the Mass of the Virgin; the Hours of the Virgin ""ad usum romane curie"", with Matins (here including the Passion Readings, probably misbound), Lauds, Prime, Terce, Sext, Nones, Vespers and Compline; the Short Hours of Virgin; the Seven Penitential Psalms, followed by a Litany of saints and prayers; the Office of the Dead; the Obsecro te and O intemerata prayers.
Illumination:
The artist here was well versed in Bruges illumination, and their use of tessellated gold and coloured backgrounds in some of the miniatures points towards to the middle of the fifteenth century (compare those in Lilian M.C. Randall et al., Medieval and Renaissance Manuscripts in the Walters Art Gallery, 1997, nos. 233 and 246). In addition, he employs a technique common in Flemish fifteenth-century art, in which the feet of his patrons extend through and outside the frame of the miniature they occupy, imparting an illusion of three-dimensional space and suggesting that the original patrons during their devotions sat between the temporal world of the viewer and the sacred space depicted within the miniature. The miniatures comprise: (1) the Crucifixion, before a naturalistic landscape, with the male patron kneeling in its lower lefthand corner;
(2) Pentecost, before a wide gold background, the Virgin seated with a book open on her lap with burnished gold edges;
(3) the Virgin and Child seated under a canopy, with the female patron kneeling in its lower lefthand corner;
(4) the Annunciation to the Virgin, before a gold background;
(5) John the evangelist seated on an island between his attribute, the eagle, and a demon, writing his Gospel on a scroll, all before a wide landscape;
(6) the Visitation of the Virgin to Elizabeth, before a wide landscape with walls and turrets;
(7) the Nativity;
(8) the Visitation of the Three Magi;
(9) the Presentation in the Temple, all before a tessellated ground of gold and coloured squares;
(10) the Massacre of the Innocents before Herod, all before a similar tessellated ground;
(11) the Flight into Egypt, before a mountainous landscape;
(12) the Dormition of the Virgin;
(13) Judgement Day, with Christ seated on a rainbow between two trumpeting angels, all before a dark blue night sky with yellow stars, the dead rising from their graves below as a grinning demonic hellmouth begins to open in the lower righthand corner;
(14) a funeral with tonsured singers before a choirbook and two hooded mourners, all before a tessellated background as before.
