Beschreibung:

MASTER OF MORGAN 85, PRESENTATION OF THE VIRGIN -- SCENE CUT FROM THE BORDER OF AN ILLUMINATED MANUSCRIPT ON VELLUM [Tours or Rouen, c.1500] 125 x70mm. Joachim, shown in rear-view, stands in the foreground accompanied by a seated, white greyhound, in front of a flight of steps leading up to the temple, he is looking up at the group of priests standing beneath the porch, who wait to receive, with outstretched arms, the small, blue-clad figure of the Virgin halfway up the stairs, Anna stands at the right behind Joachim with a gateway and distant cityscape behind her, the scene is painted in rich, rather sombre colours, rust and grey predominate over blue, ochre, white and green, strip of blank parchment on lower left edge, (creasing to upper right and slight rubbing at lower edge), window mounted on card. This scene was once the upper right corner of a border that probably carried a narrative sequence of the life of the Virgin around a page from the Office of the Virgin in a lavishly illuminated Book of Hours. It is painted in the 'School of Rouen' style by a follower of the Master of Petrarch's Triumphs. This cutting was painted by one of the most distinctive of this group, the illuminator who is named after a Book of Hours in the Pierpont Morgan Library (Ms M 85) and who collaborated with Jean Boudichon or his workshop on producing other Hours. He appears to have begun his career in Tours and then moved to Rouen: Plummer, The Last Flowering: French Painting in Manuscripts 1420-1530 , pp. 90-92, figs. 108b and 118.