Beschreibung:

Details
Pseudo-Jacquemart de Hesdin (active 1380s-1411)
St Christopher, miniature from a Book of Hours, in Latin and French, illuminated manuscript on vellum [Paris, c.1400]
An exquisite miniature from a French Book of Hours painted c.1400 by an associate of Jacquemart de Hesdin, one of the illuminators who worked on deluxe manuscripts commissioned by the great bibliophile, Jean de Berry.
101 x 59mm. Laid down onto card support and mounted. Framed.
Provenance:
(1) Sotheby's, 8 February 1943, (part of) lot 106: one of a series of 16 miniatures, the property of Miss E.A. Ranshaw of London, bought by:
(2) Grete Ring, Arthur Kauffmann, and Raphael Rosenberg (each of whom kept four leaves, selling the remaining four to drawings collector Francis Springell).
(3) Alfred Scharf (1900-1965), art historian.
(4) Baron Paul Hatvany (1899-1977); typed note, dated 14 February 1945, from Scharf to Hatvany; thence by descent.
A number of the sister cuttings are now in the collections of the following public institutions: Museum of Fine Arts, Boston (four miniatures; 43.212-215); Los Angeles County Museum (one miniature; MS 47.19.1); Musée des beaux-arts, Montréal (one miniature; Inv. 188.2016); and the Beinecke Library at Yale (two miniatures). Further description of the provenance of all sixteen miniatures is undertaken by Peter Kidd; see: https://mssprovenance.blogspot.com/2022/01/three-jaquemart-de-hesdin-miniatures.html.
Illumination:
The present miniature is painted in a style close to that of Jacquemart de Hesdin, a leading figure among the illuminators who worked for Jean de Berry during one of the greatest periods of French manuscript illumination. Specifically, it resembles the work of an anonymous artist named by Millard Meiss the Pseudo-Jacquemart, a collaborator of Jacquemart's, whose activity can be traced from the late 1380s to 1411 (see M. Meiss, French Painting in the Time of Jean de Berry, the late Fourteenth Century and the Patronage of the Duke, 1967, esp. pp.151-4, 179-91; more recently E. Taburet-Delahaye and F. Avril, Paris 1400, les arts sous Charles VI, 2004, esp. p.276, cats 41-3, 170). The two artists probably collaborated on some of the deluxe manuscripts commissioned by Jean de Berry, including the Petites Heures and the Grandes Heures; our artist, who was more often tasked with scenes in the Calendar or small miniatures, adopted the general style of Jacquemart, but his work is distinguished by a predilection for more spontaneous movement, a greater reliance on line, and a more intense colour palette. In her description of the four miniatures at the MFA Boston, which closely resemble the present miniature stylistically, Anne Hedeman identifies the style of Pseudo-Jacquemart (Beyond Words: Illuminated Manuscripts in Boston Collections, ed. Jeffrey Hamburger et al., 2016, no 76; the earliest link to Jacquemart in the scholarship was first made by Rosy Schilling, who published the sister miniatures for the first time in ‘An Unknown French Book of Hours’, Burlington Magazine, LXXXIV, 1944, pp.20-24).
Special notice
This lot has been imported from outside of the UK for sale and placed under the Temporary Admission regime. Import VAT is payable at 5% on the hammer price. VAT at 20% will be added to the buyer’s premium but will not be shown separately on our invoice.