Beschreibung:

Details
Anonymous Amiénois and Parisian artists
Book of Hours, use of Amiens, in Latin and French, illuminated manuscript on vellum [Amiens and Paris, 1490s]
A remarkable Book of Hours with inventively populated borders vividly evoking the range of secular and spiritual life in the Netherlands of the Dukes of Burgundy.
200 x 125mm. i + 90 leaves: 16, 2-78, 86, 92, 10-118, 127(of 8, lacking viii), 135(of 6 lacking vi, cancelled blank), the final gathering a later addition, 25 lines, written space 120 x 70mm, rubrics in red, line-endings and one-and two-line initials in liquid gold on grounds of red, blue or maroon, larger initials in liquid gold or blue on maroon or red grounds decorated with liquid gold, a three-sided border on every text page and most blanks with devices, mottoes, symbols, grotesques, secular figures, saints and angels on grounds finished with liquid gold, 24 small Calendar miniatures, four small miniatures, thirteen full-page miniatures in full borders and, in the later addition, four large miniatures above large initials in blue with red grounds and infills of flower or fruit sprays on gold within full borders (lacking one leaf after f.82 and one-pasted in miniature or print from f.39v, slight wear to some miniatures, charges on a few shields washed out or rubbed, head of death figure washed out in border f.51r-v, wear to calendar borders and a few other borders, off-setting to blank area f.13, traces of pilgrim badges, one perhaps with the ship of Our Lady of Boulogne, on verso of endleaf). Modern red velvet over wooden boards (boards not original, worming to re-used pastedowns and endleaf, extremities slightly rubbed). Black cloth box with red morocco lettering piece gilt.
Provenance:
(1) The text is for the use of Amiens and its calendar has in red Sts Firmin (8 January and 1 and 25 September), Honoré (16 May) and Fuscian and Gentian (7 December); the litany includes Fuscian; Salvius is among the memorials. Its exceptional borders relate it to a small group of Hours of Amiens use, suggesting that the manuscript was mostly illuminated there; the French orthography indicates a Picard scribe. It was then probably sent to Paris for its miniatures - stylistically the first two relate to Rouen and the remainder to Paris, a combination more likely in Paris. There are numerous irregularly placed devices, some on blue shields, that might indicate ownership: the initials JG BL GY GM BJ GR; the St Andrew’s Cross and firesteels of the Dukes of Burgundy, as used by their Habsburg successors; the mottoes: JE ME PLAINS, AVE MARIA, GLORIA, AMOR; blue shields with sunbursts or silver ?stars between gold ?clouds, in varying numbers, and an illegible design in tarnished silver seem unlikely to be armorial bearings, although the sunburst and the illegible design reappear below the later miniatures on ff.88v and 89v. Below the two added miniatures with men praying, ff.86 and 87v, appears a shield gules, three keys or in fess, within an orle of chain or. One of these miniatures is St James, so the patron was perhaps named Jacques, which would fit with the JG and Y border initials.
(2) There are several 16th- and 17th-century inscriptions, some faint and some deliberately obscured, all relating to Normandy or families of Norman origin. The earliest may be on front pastedown, where Jeanne de Con… nee et native de Vallen… dauphine recorded giving the book to her granddaughter, Marie le Pogneur; presumably the same Marie le Pouigneur who recorded her ownership in 1583, f.38v; on f.90v are recorded the births of Angélique in 1616 and Marie in 1617, granddaughters of Marie le Poigneur and Robert Malet, seigneur de St-Ouen by their daughter Yolande Malet and Adrien de Bailleul, Seigneur de Blangues. it is unclear how other inscriptions relate to the Le Poigneur family. De Gostimesnil asked to be remembered, ff.38v-39: Louis le Poigneur, seigneur de Limésy married Anne de Goustimesnil (d.1589) but neither apparently had a mother called Jeanne. On the verso of the endleaf, an inscription by la petite de Cresteville, Cretteville.
(3) Louise Catherine Françoise Chardon de Filières (1716-1801), daughter of Olivier Chardon de Filières and wife of Jacques Marie François Eudes de Catteville, seigneur de Mirville (1709-1759): on recto of endleaf ‘de Catteville’ and her name.
(4) Sotheby’s, 29 November 1990, lot 153.
Contents:
Calendar ff.1-6v, Hours of the Virgin, use of Amiens, ff.8-37v, Penitential Psalms and Litany, ff.40-48v; Short Office of the Dead, use of Amiens, ff.50-62; the Passion according to John followed by prayers, ff.63-70; prayers on the Sacrament ff.71-72; Salve regina and memorials to Sts John the Baptist, Anthony of Padua, Nicolas, Salvius, Adrian, Sebastian, Michael, Andrew, Mary Magdalene, Katherine, Genevieve and Barbara, prayers to the Virgin, for the dead and on the Ave Maria (lacking end) ff.73-85v, later addition: memorials to Sts Christopher, James, Anthony Abbot and Margaret ff. 86-90.
Illumination:
The borders on every page of this remarkable Book of Hours are a vivid evocation of the full range of secular and spiritual life in the Netherlands of the Dukes of Burgundy. Amiens had been part of the Burgundian lands until their definitive return to the French crown in 1477: this past is deliberately evoked by the Burgundian badges and the figures in the clothes, steeple headdresses and long-toed shoes of the third quarter of the fifteenth century. They mingle with people in contemporary dress in a richly varied pageant, where noblemen and ladies mix with moresca dancers jingling their bells, jesters with monks, exotic warriors with contemporary knights, mermaids with dancing shepherds, musicians with archers, the humans delightfully interspersed with cats pursuing mice, squirrels, bears, dragons and hybrid beasts and grotesques. On some leaves, the figures and motifs relate to the verbal or visual content: the instruments of the Passion for the Passion sequence, death figures by the Office of the Dead, while the borders around miniatures often extend their content with further narrative scenes. Elsewhere the religious subjects seem chosen more arbitrarily: monograms of Jesus, AM for Ave Maria, figures of angels and saints, sometimes recognisable like Mary Magdalene and Genevieve on f.72.
The style of the borders, the motto JE ME PLAINS and the repeated initials, connect this book to a small group of Hours for the use of Amiens, where they were probably produced towards 1500. The Hours in the Bibliothèque municipale in Abbeville (ms 16) perhaps comes closest in the frequency of the motto and initials and the richness of the borders, although not obviously by the same hands. The motto and initials are also found in the Hours first recorded in Amsterdam in 1790 (Bodleian Library, MS. Douce 152) and in the more modestly decorated Hours in the New York Public Library (Spencer MS 10). The possibility of JG being an artist’s workshop mark is raised by its appearance, only twice, without mottoes or other monograms, in an Hours for the use of Rome of similar style but with staider architectural borders, associated with Péronne and datable between 1483 and 1498 (Les Enluminures, Catalogue 13, 2007, no 6).
The lavish variety of the borders in the Hours offered here suggests a patron who wanted something outstanding, even by the standards of this exceptional group. The miniatures were not entrusted to the border hands with their vigorous linearity, typical of Amiens illumination at this date, but to illuminators probably based in Paris, although the first two miniatures with their clear outlines and surface pattern indicate someone trained in Rouen, ff.7v and 13v. The following seven miniatures are by an illuminator close to the Master of the Chronique Scandaleuse, named from BnF ms Clairambault 486, and perhaps influenced by the Master of Martainville 183, named from a Book of Hours in the Bibliothèque municipale in Rouen; both were active in Paris. A weaker practitioner of a similar style provided the next four full-page miniatures and the small miniatures.
The final added section was intended to blend with the original decoration. The miniature borders employ the birds, beasts and hybrids found elsewhere; the borders of the added text follow conventions, influenced by printed Horae, that were current in Paris in the decades around 1500. Borders in a similar vein had already been executed on ff.62 and 79, that on f.79 apparently inspiring the border, clearly by a different hand, on f. 86. The miniatures in the added section relate to the style of Jean Pichore based in Paris from the 1490s to the 1520s but also working for Rouen patrons; an origin in Rouen is possible and would accord with the later provenance evidence. The large headed figures, landscapes with feathery tress and St Margaret’s antique interior may owe as much to Pichore’s printed book illustrations as to his miniatures. The costume of the kneeling men as well as the style indicate a date into the 16th century, perhaps the second decade. (For these artists, see F. Avril and N. Reynaud, Les manuscrits à peintures en France 1440-1520, 1993; C. Zöhl, Jean Pichore Buchmaler, Graphiker und Verleger in Paris um 1500, 2004).
It was to Jean Pichore that the Town Council of Amiens turned in 1518 when they wanted to present the King’s mother with an illuminated manuscript. Amiens’s return to French rule strengthened its connections with the great book producing centres of Paris and Rouen (see S. Nash, Between France and Flanders, Manuscript Painting in Amiens in the Fifteenth Century, 1999, this manuscript cited on p.205). This Hours emulates royal standards in its Parisian miniatures, commissioned in an exceptional combination with the splendidly varied and beguiling borders of a select group of Amiens manuscripts.
The subjects of the full-page miniatures are: the Annunciation f.7, the Visitation f.13v, the Nativity f.19v, the Annunciation to the Shepherds f.22v, the Adoration of the Magi f.25v, the Presentation in the Temple f.28v, the Flight into Egypt f.31v, the Coronation of the Virgin f.35v, Job on the dung heap f.49v, the Mass of St Gregory f.70v, Lamentation f.72v, Martyrdom of Sr Andrew f.76v, Martyrdom of St Barbara f.78v.
The subjects of the large miniatures in the added section are: St Christopher with kneeling man f.86, St James with kneeling man f.87v, St Anthony Abbot f. 88v, St Margaret 89v.
The subjects of the small miniatures are: Sts Nicholas f.74, Sebastian f.75, Our Lady of Boulogne: the Virgin and Child in a boat f.79, souls in the fires of purgatory f.81.
The subjects of the Calendar border scenes are the signs of the zodiac in landscapes below the text and the occupations of the months to the side: man drinking by fire f.1, man warming hands by fire f.1v, man pruning f.2, man carrying flower f.2v, man with hawk f.3, man carrying sheep (to shear) f.3v, man with scythe in hayfield f.4, man harvesting with sickle f.4v, man sowing f.5, man treading grapes f.5v, man slaughtering pig f.6, man putting bread in oven f.6v.
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