Beschreibung:

BOOK OF HOURS, use of Rouen, in Latin and French, ILLUMINATED MANUSCRIPT ON VELLUM
BOOK OF HOURS, use of Rouen, in Latin and French, ILLUMINATED MANUSCRIPT ON VELLUM [Rouen, c.1480s] 175 x 125mm, ii + 117 + ii, early foliation 1-26, COMPLETE, 16 lines written in a bâtarde hand in brown ink between two verticals and 17 horizontals ruled in red, justification: 105 x 67mm, text capitals touched yellow, rubrics in red, one-line initials and line-endings in liquid gold on grounds alternately of red or blue, two-line initials in blue on liquid gold grounds with infills of flowers and foliage, four-line initials with white acanthus staves on similar grounds, EVERY WRITTEN PAGE WITH FULL BORDERS of acanthus, flowers and fruit, TWENTY-FOUR CALENDAR MINIATURES of the occupations of the month and religious scenes related to the zodiac sign, SIX SMALL MINIATURES depicting saints in the suffrages, SIXTEEN LARGE MINIATURES WITH BORDERS INCORPORATING SMALLER MINIATURES, fifteen on liquid gold grounds each containing two smaller miniatures, with acanthus, fruit- and flower-sprays enriched by animals, birds and grotesques, one half-page with three smaller miniatures beneath (Hours of the Cross misbound, occasional smudging, particularly in the borders, a few small losses of pigment from miniatures on ff.27, 36, 48, 55, 91, small tear in the margin of f.90). Modern blind-stamped calf. PROVENANCE: The Paris Calendar adapted for Rouen use with the feast days of Sts. Martial (July 3), Sauveur (August 6), and Romain (October 23) in gold, the inclusion of Sts Mellon and Vivien in the Litany, and the use of the Office of the Virgin indicate that the book was made in Rouen. The original owner of the manuscript is depicted kneeling beside the Virgin and Child in the miniature preceding the O Intermerata ; the added leaves at the beginning include a faint inscription containing the name of an early, perhaps 16th-century owner: '[li]vre isi apartienne a demoiselle de saint leger Louise de Poullain [...]'; acquired from Goodspeed's Book Shop, 1980. CONTENT: Calendar ff.1-12v; Gospel extracts ff.13-18; Obsecro te and O Intemerata ff.18v-25v; blank f.26; Hours of the Virgin, use of Rouen, ff.27-68: matins f.27, lauds (including suffrages) f.36, prime f.48, terce f.52, sext f.55, none f.57, vespers f.60, compline f.65; Penitential Psalms and Litany ff.69-84v; Hours of the Cross: none, vespers and compline f.85r-v; Hours of the Holy Spirit ff.86-88v; Hours of the Cross: matins, lauds, prime, terce and sext ff.89-90v; Office of the Dead, use of Rouen ff.91-115; Stabat mater ff.115v-117. ILLUMINATION: A REFINED AND ICONOGRAPHICALLY RICH EXAMPLE OF AN HOURS MADE IN ROUEN, A LEADING CENTER OF MANUSCRIPT PRODUCTION at the end of the fifteenth century. The elaborate decorative program, with its linear compositions, textured gold patterns and emphatically gesturing figures drawing on stock models established by the Master of the Geneva Latini (or Master of the Échevinage de Rouen), is associable with the wide group of Rouen manuscripts discussed by Rowan Watson in The Playfair Hours , Victoria and Albert Museum, 1984, and is the work of at least three distinct illuminators: Robert Boyvin favored artist of Cardinal Georges d'Amboise, Archbishop of Rouen, whose career is documented between 1487 and 1503; the Playfair Master, responsible in part for the Book of Hours at the V&A (MSL/1918/475) and a follower of the Master of the Geneva Latini. There are many points of comparison between the present manuscript and the Playfair Hours: most notably the virtually identical quadripartite compositions representing the Four Evangelist (f.13). The presence of scenes from classical mythology in two of the borders -- Nessus abducting Deianeira from Hercules, f.36, and Orpheus and Eurydice, f.55 -- relate this Hours to one also from Rouen sold at Sotheby's, London, July 8, 2008, lot 32, where Orpheus again appears beside the Adoration of the Magi (but the Visitation, where Nessus might have been, is one of several missing miniatures from that manuscript). T