Beschreibung:

PRAYERBOOK, in German, lluminated manuscript on vellum [Nuremberg, c.1490] 118 x 78mm. A fragment of 21 leaves, each with a miniature on one side and, on the other, 15 lines of an elegant hybrid gothic bookhand written in brown-black ink between two verticals and 16 horizontals ruled in ink, justification: 81 x 51mm, capitals touched red, rubrics in red, ELEVEN ILLUMINATED INITIALS of between three- and seven-lines height made up of flamboyant, tightly curled acanthus, the staves of pink or blue against gold or coloured grounds and infilled with vari-coloured foliage, the seven-line initials in moulding frames and accompanied by THREE ACANTHUS BORDERS WITH FINCHES AND GAME-BIRDS in the lower margins, TWENTY-ONE FULL-PAGE MINIATURES (lacking all folios without miniatures, borders cropped, a few miniatures with tiny pigment losses, occasional spotting or minor thumbing of margins, a few leaves loose, leaf 3 misbound). 19th-century panelled brown morocco stamped in blind, vellum interleaving, gilt edges (very slight rubbing of extremities). Brown cloth box. THE REAPPEARANCE OF 'ONE OF THE BEST PRODUCTS OF LATE GOTHIC BOOK ILLUMINATION': AN EXCEPTIONAL SERIES OF GERMAN MINIATURES FROM THE FIRMIN-DIDOT-COLLECTION PROVENANCE: 1. The style of illumination places the manuscript in southern Germany, more particularly in the region of Nuremberg. There are close analogies with miniatures in a prayerbook in Augsburg (Universitätsbibliothek Cod.I.3.8°.1) that is localisable to Nuremberg on the basis of dialect, the Litany and the inclusion of a view of the city in the background of one of the miniatures: K. Schneider Deutsche mittelalteriche Handschriften der Universitätsbibliothek Augsburg , 1988. It seems likely that the present manuscript was produced in the same area, and the prominence of St Aegidius, one of the patrons of Nuremberg, in the miniature of All Saints (f.16) supports this view. The inclusion of the Vision of St Bernard may indicate a Cistercian connection on the part of the intended owner. 2. Ambrose Firmin-Didot- his bookplate inside the upper cover and no 22 in his 1884 sale. The leaves with miniatures had been separated from the text by the time that they were acquired by Firmin-Didot- and 20 of them were bound together in the present morocco binding. Firmin-Didot-subsequently purchased the miniature of St Catherine, apparently originating from the same prayerbook, and this was pasted on to the rear endleaf: Catalogue illustré des livres précieux manuscrits et imprimés faisant partie de la bibliothèque de M. Ambroise Firmin-Didot-, Paris, 1884. 3. Henri Vever his bookplate inside upper cover. CONTENT: These are the leaves with miniatures from a remarkable manuscript in German. It contained prayers and devotions to the Virgin, Christ and the Passion of Christ, suffrages to individual and All Saints, and the Prayers of St Gregory. Unusually the text of the prayerbook, with the exception of the suffrages, appears to have been written continuously, with the scribe leaving a blank page to receive a miniature immediately after the opening of a prayer or devotion, irrespective of whether it was a recto or verso. Consequently in only nine instances does the text on the 'back' of a miniature include the beginning of a prayer or devotion. In only one instance, God the Father in Majesty, is the reverse blank. ILLUMINATION: The relationship between these mesmerising miniatures and those in two other prayerbooks, one that once belonged to Fürst Wallerstein-Wallerstein and another in the library at Wolfenbüttel, was already pointed out in the catalogue of the Firmin-Didot-sale (these two prayerbooks are now Augsburg, Universitätsbibliothek, Cod.I.3.8°.1 and Herzog-August-Bibliothek Cod.87.10.Aug.12°). More recently Ulrich Merkl has discussed the three manuscripts -- the present one known only from the description and illustrations in the 1884 sale catalogue, and described as 'verschollen' -- in Buchmalerei in Bayern in de