Workshop of the Master of the Older Prayerbook of Maximilian Fantastic Creatures Engaged in a Water Tournament, in a border on a leaf from a Book of Hours [Bruges?, mid-15th century; and Ghent? late 15th or early 16th century] A spectacular and fantastical leaf illuminated in the workshop of the Master of the Older Prayerbook of Maximilian, from the von Lanna-Busch Book of Hours. c.205 x 150mm., 17 lines of text, comprising the beginning of the Seven Penitential Psalms, surrounded by a full border depicting a hilly landscape with two battling creatures in the foreground, swans on a lake in the middle distance, and birds in the sky, modern foliation ‘188’ (or 138?) (cropped close at the fore-edge, several traces of mounting-tape, minor cockling). Provenance: (1) Adalbert Freiherr von Lanna (1836-1909) of Prague: his sale by Gilhofer & Ranschberg, Vienna, 3–4 April 1911, lot 4; presumably bought by: (2) Rudolf Busch (1876–1956) of Mainz, art collector, art historian, and museum director: his sale by Baer, Frankfurt, 4 May 1921, lot 272. (3) Sold as ‘The Property of a Gentleman’ (an art connoisseur, real estate broker, philanthropist, and one of the 'Monuments Men' at the end of WWII), at Christie’s, New York, 21 October 1977, lot 103 (col. ill.); bought for $16,000 for H.P. Kraus and broken up. (4) Christie’s, 28 November 2001, lot 6. The engaging border is attributable to the workshop of the Master of the Older Prayerbook of Maximilian, named after the manuscript made for the Emperor Maximilian, Vienna ÖNB cod. 1907. The Master was one of the leading figures in the so-called Ghent-Bruges School of illumination, collaborating with Gerard Horenbout and Simon Bening as well as the anonymous Master of the Prayerbooks of c. 1500 and exerting such a formative influence on Simon Bening that he is plausibly identified as Simon's father, Alexander Bening He apparently first used the design, around the opening of the Psalter of St Jerome, in the Hours of William, Lord Hastings, datable before his execution in 1483 (BL, Add. 54782, f.279, ill. in D. Turner, The Hastings Hours). Clearly of great appeal, it reappears in some of the finest Netherlandish manuscripts of the early 16th century: the Hours of James IV of Scotland (ÖNB cod. 1897, f.211v) and for St Thomas in the Rothschild Prayerbook (sold in these rooms 8 July 1999, lot 102, f.212). The workshop of the Master of the Prayerbooks of c.1500 also adopted it in a richly illuminated hours in Cambridge, Fitzwilliam 1058-1975 (A. Arnould and J.-M. Massing Splendours of Flanders, p.88) and the Prayerbooks Master is the likely source for the birds which here animate the empty sky of the Hastings Hours.
Workshop of the Master of the Older Prayerbook of Maximilian Fantastic Creatures Engaged in a Water Tournament, in a border on a leaf from a Book of Hours [Bruges?, mid-15th century; and Ghent? late 15th or early 16th century] A spectacular and fantastical leaf illuminated in the workshop of the Master of the Older Prayerbook of Maximilian, from the von Lanna-Busch Book of Hours. c.205 x 150mm., 17 lines of text, comprising the beginning of the Seven Penitential Psalms, surrounded by a full border depicting a hilly landscape with two battling creatures in the foreground, swans on a lake in the middle distance, and birds in the sky, modern foliation ‘188’ (or 138?) (cropped close at the fore-edge, several traces of mounting-tape, minor cockling). Provenance: (1) Adalbert Freiherr von Lanna (1836-1909) of Prague: his sale by Gilhofer & Ranschberg, Vienna, 3–4 April 1911, lot 4; presumably bought by: (2) Rudolf Busch (1876–1956) of Mainz, art collector, art historian, and museum director: his sale by Baer, Frankfurt, 4 May 1921, lot 272. (3) Sold as ‘The Property of a Gentleman’ (an art connoisseur, real estate broker, philanthropist, and one of the 'Monuments Men' at the end of WWII), at Christie’s, New York, 21 October 1977, lot 103 (col. ill.); bought for $16,000 for H.P. Kraus and broken up. (4) Christie’s, 28 November 2001, lot 6. The engaging border is attributable to the workshop of the Master of the Older Prayerbook of Maximilian, named after the manuscript made for the Emperor Maximilian, Vienna ÖNB cod. 1907. The Master was one of the leading figures in the so-called Ghent-Bruges School of illumination, collaborating with Gerard Horenbout and Simon Bening as well as the anonymous Master of the Prayerbooks of c. 1500 and exerting such a formative influence on Simon Bening that he is plausibly identified as Simon's father, Alexander Bening He apparently first used the design, around the opening of the Psalter of St Jerome, in the Hours of William, Lord Hastings, datable before his execution in 1483 (BL, Add. 54782, f.279, ill. in D. Turner, The Hastings Hours). Clearly of great appeal, it reappears in some of the finest Netherlandish manuscripts of the early 16th century: the Hours of James IV of Scotland (ÖNB cod. 1897, f.211v) and for St Thomas in the Rothschild Prayerbook (sold in these rooms 8 July 1999, lot 102, f.212). The workshop of the Master of the Prayerbooks of c.1500 also adopted it in a richly illuminated hours in Cambridge, Fitzwilliam 1058-1975 (A. Arnould and J.-M. Massing Splendours of Flanders, p.88) and the Prayerbooks Master is the likely source for the birds which here animate the empty sky of the Hastings Hours.
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