A new liturgical Use - photo 1
A new liturgical Use - photo 2

A new liturgical Use

Lot 92
12.12.2022 00:00UTC +00:00
Classic
Sold
£ 3 780
AuctioneerCHRISTIE'S
Event locationUnited Kingdom, London
Buyer Premiumsee on Website%
Archive
The auction is completed. No bids can be placed anymore.
Archive
ID 869499
Lot 92 | A new liturgical Use
Estimate value
£ 1 000 – 1 500
A new liturgical Use
Leaf from an unfinished Office of the Dead, Unidentified (Peterborough or Ely?) Use, from the Iken Psalter, in Latin, illuminated manuscript on vellum [England, East Anglia, late 13th or early 14th century].
A fine leaf from a deluxe illuminated East Anglian Psalter, its text apparently revealing for the first time a particular liturgical Use; annotated in Middle English.

c.265 × 179mm. Ruled in plummet for up to 30 lines of text, or fewer lines of text with music for which lines have been left blank, without staves or notation, two-line illuminated foliate initials introduce each reading, blank spaces also for rubrics, for which notes to the rubricator are visible (‘a’, ‘p’, ‘r’, and ‘v’, for antiphons, psalms, responsories, and versicles); the text comprising the end of the first and beginning of the second nocturns, with the third to fifth lessons, with their responsories and versicles (‘Manus tue fecerunt […] Commis[sa mea]’) (slight darkening at the edges, and faint offsets from facing illuminations, but overall very fine).

Provenance:
(1) Perhaps written for the church of St Botulph at Iken in Suffolk: Botulph was one of only three English saints in the litany of the parent manuscript, together with Dunstan and Edmund; a full-page drawing of King Edmund (whose relics were at Bury St Edmunds) was added on a flyleaf in the 15th century (now Beinecke Library, Takamiya MS 136); a flyleaf note referred to Orford, which is only about 4 miles or 6km south of Iken.
(2) The present leaf with a 15th/16th-century inscription in English on the five wits: ‘thes be the v wyttes gostly wyll mynde reson undrestondeng and ymagynasyon’.
(3) The parent volume, still in a 15th-century binding, was sold at Sotheby’s, 10 December 1969, lot 36, with full-page plate, to Charles Traylen, and offered by him in his Catalogue 77 (1972); broken-up by Bruce Ferrini by 1980, leaves are now at the Cleveland Museum of Art and at Stanford, Cornell, and Ohio State Universities.
(4) Bernard Quaritch, Catalogue 1036: Bookhands of the Middle Ages [I]: Medieval Manuscript Leaves, Principally from a Collection Formed in the 19th Century (London, 1984), no. 17 (with full-page plate).
(5) Colker MS 421; acquired in 1990 from Quaritch.

Text
Very surprisingly, the text of the present leaf does not correspond to the widespread Use of Sarum, but instead corresponds closely to the otherwise unrecorded Office of the Dead in a 15th-century Psalter made for use in or near Ely, to judge by its litany (Cambridge, Trinity College, MS. B.11.6), and to the 14th-century Barlow Psalter, thought to have been made for Ramsey Abbey and adapted for Peterborough Abbey (Bodleian Library, MS. Barlow 22), and, according to Knud Ottosen, a Peterborough Antiphonary (Cambridge, Magdalene College, MS F.4.10).

It is interesting that the illumination was completed – to a high standard – but the music was not: usually the music would be provided before the illumination.

Genre:Religious genre
Place of origin:United Kingdom
Address of auction CHRISTIE'S
8 King Street, St. James's
SW1Y 6QT London
United Kingdom
Preview
28.11.2022 – 12.12.2022
Phone +44 (0)20 7839 9060
Email
4FQ.AYGKAGLUQ@FO3G@
Buyer Premium see on Website
Conditions of purchaseConditions of purchase

Related terms

Frequently asked questions

First of all, you should register to be able to purchase at auction. After confirming your email address, enter your personal information in your user profile, such as your first name, last name, and mail address. Choose a lot from the upcoming auction and the maximum amount you want to place on it. After confirmation of your choice, we will send your application by e-mail to the appropriate auction house. If the auction house accepts a request, it will participate in the auction. You can view the current status of a bid at any time in your personal account in the "Bids" section.
Auctions are performed by auction houses and each of the auction houses describes their terms of auction. You can see the texts in the section "Auction information".
The results of the auction are published within a few days after the end of the auction. In the top menu of the site, find the tab "Auctions". Click on it and you will be on the auction catalog page, where you can easily find the category "Results". After opening it, select the desired auction from the list, enter and view the current status of the interested lot.
The information about the auction winners is confidential. The auction winner will receive a direct notification from the auction house responsible with instructions for further action: an invoice for payment and the manner in which the goods will be received.
Each of the auction houses has its own payment policy for the won lots. All auction houses accept bank transfers, most of them accept credit card payments. In the near future you will find detailed information for each case in the section "Auction information" on the page of the auction catalog and the lot.
Shipment of the won lot depends on its size. Small items can be delivered by post. Larger lots are sent by courier. Employees of the auction houses will offer you a wide range to choose from.
No. The archive serves as a reference for the study of auction prices, photographs and descriptions of works of art.