Beschreibung:

BOOK OF HOURS, unidentified use, in Latin and Dutch, ILLUMINATED MANUSCRIPT ON VELLUM
BOOK OF HOURS, unidentified use, in Latin and Dutch, ILLUMINATED MANUSCRIPT ON VELLUM [Ghent], 1502 156 x 112mm. ii + 131 + ii leaves: 1-2 8 , 3 7 (?of 8 lacking i), 4-8 8 , 9 9 (of 8 + ii, inserted miniature), 10 8 , 11 9 (of 8 + iii, inserted miniature), 12-16 8 , 17 2 , 17 lines written in brown-black ink in a bâtarde hand between two verticals and 18 horizontals ruled in red, justification: 96 x 63 mm, rubrics in red, one- and two-line initials alternately in red or blue, line endings in red and/or blue, text initials touched red, two- and three-line initials in red flourished with pink or in blue flourished with red, some detailed in green and/or yellow, leading to part flourished borders, THREE HISTORIATED INITIALS with full architectural or scatter borders facing THREE FULL-PAGE MINIATURES WITH MATCHING FULL BORDERS, one FULL-PAGE HERALDIC MINIATURE, added armorial genealogy (probably lacking leaf with miniature at start of third gathering, some wear to miniatures and borders, tarnishing of silver in coats of arms, early translations added to ff.130-131). 18th-century mottled calf gilt, spine in six compartments gilt, fore-edges stained blue (rebacked, wear to joints). PROVENANCE: The scribe dated his work 1502 in the colophon: 'Desen bouc was vulhendt int iaer ons heeren xv c ende twee En bidt voor hem dien screef want hy seer aerme van duechden bleef' (f.128v). Its very individual features show that the book was commissioned by Nicolaas Biese and his wife Margareta Verdebroeck of Ghent, whose coats of arms appear on f.1 and under the miniature on f.83v. There they are shown at prayer with their three sons and four daughters, presented to the Virgin and Child by their patrons Sts Nicholas and Margaret. The cowled saint behind St Margaret is probably Gerard, the patron saint of their eldest son. One of the daughters, probably the eldest, is Margareta, wife of Georges Sersanders, whose fourth child was born in about 1502. The use of the feminine form for one prayer may mean that the book was intended for Margareta. The devotion to St Anne evident from the text and images would be appropriate for a wife and mother and it is possible that Margareta was already a widow. On an added bifolium at the end, Nicolaas III Biese traced his descent from his great-grandfather, the book's commissioner, and back to Nicolaas I's great-grandfather, giving the arms of both husbands and wives, who chiefly came from other Ghent families (Steelant, Sersanders, Everaert), culminating in the arms of Nicolaas III and his wife Ava van Heemra, f.130v; on the facing page there are full displays of the arms of Biese and Heemra, each flanked by eight coats of arms of Nicolaas and Ava's ancestors, followed by the date 1620. According to this line of descent, the book is likely to have passed from Nicolaas I to his son Gerard, married to Geertruyt van Leyden, whose arms are those of van Leyden van Leeuwen, with the colours reversed, and then to their son Nicolaas II and his wife Ludovica Everaerdt, the parents of Nicolaas III. Ava was the daughter of Tjaerdt van Heemra and Ava van Ubbema and descended from other Frisian families (van Jongema, van Doema) and also from the Jarges of Liège; her brother was Lord of Holwinde, north of Groningen. By 1614 she had married Nicolas III, who had perhaps sought refuge in the north from the wars; she was still alive in 1636. They were possibly childless, since there is no mention of Ava's heirs in a Heemra family property settlement of 1667. The famous scholar Nicolaas Biese (1516-1572), who became doctor to the Emperor Maximilian II, was probably a son of one of the younger sons seen on f. 83v. The book was presumably made in Ghent. It includes a prayer to the locally revered St Livinus, although the calendar relates more generally to the southern Netherlands. It includes St Amand, apostle of Flanders (6 Feb), St Servatius of Tongeren and Maastricht (13 May), Sts Remy and Bavo (1 Oct), Autbert, Bishop of Camb