Beschreibung:

HOURS OF MARIE D'ANJOU, in Latin and French. Five leaves with miniatures of the Virgin and Child enthroned, the Annunciation, the Nativity, the Annunciation to the Shepherds and David in Penitence, ILLUMINATED MANUSCRIPT ON VELLUM [central or western France, 1430s] 186 x 143mm (leaves); 93 x 69mm (miniatures), single column of 14 lines, written in a gothic bookhand in black-brown ink between two verticals and 15 horizontals ruled in pink, justification: 99 x 68mm, rubrics in red, capitals touched yellow, one- and two-line initials of burnished gold against grounds and infills of pink and blue with white penwork decoration, line-endings of the same colours, each miniature above four lines of text opening with a three-line initial with pink or blue staves on grounds of the contrasting colour with white penwork decoration against infills of burnished gold with formalised trefoils of red and blue, miniatures accompanied by full-page borders (occasional minor flaking of pigment, slight marginal discolouration from old mount). Cloth slipcase. PROVENANCE: 1. The two angels below the Annunciation hold shields with the arms of Marie d'Anjou, Queen of France (1404-1463): France moderne , for Charles VII, dimidiated by a compressed version of the arms of her father Louis II d'Anjou, with Jerusalem, Anjou ancien and Anjou moderne in tierce. The red label of Anjou ancien and the red border of Anjou moderne have flaked but are still distinguishable. Although the more complex Angevin arms invade the dexter side, the shield is recognisably that used to identify Marie on seals and in stained glass (Christian de Mrindol, Le roi Ren et la seconde maison d'Anjou , Paris, 1987, pp.50-51, figs.53-56). The sister of Ren d'Anjou, Marie married the Dauphin Charles in April 1422, shortly before the death on 21 October 1422 of his father Charles VI who had disinherited his son in favour of Henry V of England. The House of Anjou was crucial in recognising Charles as King of France, a title and arms he assumed immediately although it was not until 1429 that Joan of Arc could escort him to be crowned in Rheims. Since rulers' shields are not invariably crowned, the absence of a crown is not a more precise indication of date: Marie d'Anjou could not have used France moderne undifferenced for her husband before the death of his father; her arms already appear crowned on a seal in use in 1427. Even after the reconquest of Paris from the English in 1436, Charles spent little time in the capital and Marie lived mostly at Chinon and Tours. Little is known about her books. Delisle collected three references to books in her possession, but wrote that he knew of no existing books that had been owned by Marie: L. Delisle, Le Cabinet des manuscrits , I (Paris 1868), p.73. Despite her nearly forty years as Queen consort, these leaves are apparently the only survivors of the manuscripts she must have owned. 2. Property of Mrs Holmes (?): inscription in pencil on reverse of Virgin and Child enthroned. 3. H.P. Kraus CONTENT: These leaves include extracts from standard texts of a Book of Hours: Gospel extracts, the prayer to the Virgin Obsecro te , the Office of the Virgin, and the Seven Penitential Psalms. ILLUMINATION: More than one hand seems to have been involved in the miniatures, which are all set against finely tesselated backgrounds in blue, red and burnished gold and with crowns, haloes and garment trimmings all in gold. The illumination appears to date from the 1430s and was probably executed in the Loire region, the area where the court preferred to remain even after 1436. As the great nobles left Paris, so too did many illuminators to escape the war and find new markets. Parisian patterns spread through France and into the Netherlands: the Annunciation here is closely modelled on that of the Boucicaut Hours, from which the influential Boucicaut Master is named, while the Virgin and Child Enthroned and King David resemble the equivalent compositions of