Beschreibung:

Book of Hours, Use of Paris, in Latin and French, illuminated manuscript on parchment [northern France (probably Paris), c. 1480] 142 leaves (plus two paper flyleaves at each end), complete, collation: i12, ii8, iii4, iv-viii8, ix6, x-xi8, xii10, xiii-xvii8, xviii6, occasional catchwords remaining, single column, 16 lines in a handsome lettre bâtarde with occasional cadels in margin, capitals touched in yellow, one- or 2-line in liquid gold on brown, red or blue grounds, linefillers as knotty tree branches heightened with liquid gold, scrolling liquid gold patterns on coloured bars, or as tiny floral sprays on coloured patches, five historiated initials in white scrolls on coloured grounds heightened with liquid gold, with decorated borders on three sides, some enclosing birds, insects, a smiling lion and a club-wielding centaur, five small arch-topped miniatures with opening text on decorated panels and with decorated borders on two sides, four large arch-topped miniatures, above 4-line initials 5 lines of text and full decorated borders, one enclosing a centaur with a sword and shield, another with the decorations laid down on two large gold belts in the lower and outer margins, one full page miniature of the Annunciation to the Virgin with accompanying text along edge of her baldachin and the bottom frame in style of Jean Bourdichon some small spots and areas of cockling, chipping to faces in a few miniatures, bas-de-page of first leaf once cut away and replaced with blank parchment later, edges trimmed during last binding, else good condition, 162 by 113 mm. (written space: 93 by 55 mm.); early nineteenth-century morocco, gilt-tooled with single floral fillet on each board, and ornamental urns in each spine compartment, central oval in each board recessed and with German arms and helm (now indistinct), worn at edges, but strong in binding, blue marbled endleaves Provenance: 1. Written and illuminated for the woman in a black headdress who kneels before the Virgin and Child in the miniatures on fols. 22v and 135. In the second she is accompanied by her husband and a blonde youth who may be their son. 2. Hugo Adolph, who names himself as an official of Aschaffenburg in Bavaria in his eighteenth-century ex libris at the head of fol. 1r. Text: The volume comprises: a Calendar (fol. 1r); Passion readings (fol. 13r); the Obsecro te (fol. 18v, with “Salvus mater pietatis …” in blue capitals on scrolls in border) and O Intemerata (fol. 22v); the Hours of the Virgin, with Matins (fol. 25v), Lauds (fol. 35r), Prime (fol. 45r), Terce (fol. 50r), Sext (fol. 54r), None (fol. 57r), Vespers (fol. 60v) and Compline (fol. 66v); the Penitential Psalms (fol. 71r), followed by a Litany and prayers; the Hours of the Cross (fol. 87r); the Hours of the Virgin (fol. 90r); the Office of the Dead (fol. 93r); the Doulce Dame (fol. 135r) and Doulx Dieulx (fol. 140r). Illumination: The illumination here is redolent of the book arts of Paris in the last decades of the fifteenth century. The shift between a large miniature in the style of Jean Bourdichon to smaller three-quarter ones, as well as the wide variety of border decorations (with foliage appearing on banners, heart- and half fleur-de-lys-shapes, or picked out of rich mono-coloured backgrounds), identifies the work as an artist in the close following of the Master of Martainville 183 (fl. 1500-1520). He was first identified and named by E. König in Leuchtendes Mittelalter IV, 1992, after a Book of Hours in Rouen’s Bibliothèque municipale. The image of Death on fol. 93, as a decomposing corpse with a grinning skull for a head and his stomach torn open, astride a horned deer-like animal with a forked tongue, is highly unusual and may well be unique. Here Death on his demonic steed leaps from a bush, brandishing a spear and trampling kings and bishops underfoot, while other dead men in the background attempt to flee into the hilly landscape, each with a long red spear sticking out from their back