Beschreibung:

HORAE B.M.V., use of Rome (Latin). Paris: (Nicolas Hygman for) Guillaume Eustace [c. 1516, with almanach for 1516-1530]. 8vo, 157 x 97 mm. (6 3/16 x 3 13/16 in.), eighteenth-century French black morocco, covers with narrow gold-tooled flower and leaf border, spine gilt in six compartments, g.e., vellum flyleaves, extremities rubbed, title-leaf a trifle rubbed, small hole to k4 catching 6 letters, small repairs to lower margins of fols. i2 and i3 touching 4 letters, a few other unobtrusive marginal repairs, occasional minor mostly marginal soiling, very occasional smudging or offsetting . Collation: [a]8 b-p8 2a-d8. 152 leaves. 22 lines. Bâtarde type. PRINTED ON VELLUM, ruled in red. Title with Eustace's large woodcut or metalcut device, 14 three-quarter-page cuts, each measuring approximately 3 1/2 x 2 1/4 in., each printed above 4 lines of text, one small cut of the Holy Trinity at beginning of Suffrages, THE DEVICE AND ALL CUTS FINELY OVERPAINTED IN GOLD AND COLORS BY A CONTEMPORARY ILLUMINATOR, architectural borders to the cuts supplied in gold and various colors. Rubricated: one- and two-line initials and line-fillers supplied in matte gold on alternating red or blue grounds, capital strokes in yellow. Bohatta 1000; Brunet V, 1647, no 294. The books of hours printed by Guillaume Eustace are distinguished by the absence of woodcut or metalcut borders, an otherwise standard element of printed French fifteenth- and sixteenth-century Horae. The illuminator of this copy, who has supplied his own architectural borders to the full-page cuts, and refined or elaborated on some details of composition, probably worked in Eustace's atelier. As noted by Brunet: "Le vélin [of Eustace's Books of Hours] est fort beau, et les figures et les lettres initiales qui les décorent nous paraissent avoir été peintes avec beaucoup plus de soin que dans la plupart des autre livres de ce genre publiés à la même époque" (Brunet V, 1644). Provenance : Anonymous owner (sale, Sotheby's London, 25 June 1993, lot 410).