Anonymous Franche-Comté artist - photo 1
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Anonymous Franche-Comté artist

Lot 30
13.07.2022 10:30UTC +00:00
Classic
Sold
£ 20 160
AuctioneerCHRISTIE'S
Event locationUnited Kingdom, London
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ID 794508
Lot 30 | Anonymous Franche-Comté artist
Estimate value
£ 15 000 – 20 000
Anonymous Franche-Comté artist

Book of Hours, use of Troyes, in Latin and French, illuminated manuscript on vellum [Troyes, c.1460-65].

An arresting Book of Hours made for a Troyes patron but illuminated by a Franche-Comté artist and later owned by the Antoine Portail, private doctor to Charles IX, Henri III and Henri IV.



167 x 115mm. iii + 202 + iii leaves, apparently complete, collation: 1-26, 3-98, 106, 11-228, 237 (of 8, i a cancelled blank), 248, 2510, modern foliation in pencil 1-202 followed here, 14 lines, ruled space: 95 x 60mm, catchwords survive, rubrics in red, initials and line-fillers in gold on red and blue backgrounds with white tracery throughout, several with flourishing extending into the margins, 9 large miniatures within full borders, the Hours of lauds, terce, none and compline opening with large illuminated initials within three-sided borders (lacking the Hour of sext, but since terce ends with a rubric for none instead of sext, this may have been a scribal error and sext was never supplied, some marginal staining and smudging to the borders and initials, rubbing and loss of pigment to some of the miniatures, e.g. on ff.98. 122 and 197). Non-uniform boards reused from earlier binding (the leather peeling, lacking spine, but strengthened with a fragment of a leaf from Johann Georg Theodor Graesse’s 1843 bibliography on occult sciences Bibliotheca magica et pneumatica, p.25, specifically the section on summoning the devil).



Provenance:

(1) The calendar, Hours of the Virgin, Office of the Dead, and litanies are all for the use of Troyes, with Urbanus of Troyes second among the martyrs (the Rayonnant Gothic church of Saint-Urbain in Troyes is dedicated to him); Frodobertus among the confessors; and Hoyldis and Maura among the virgins. That the book was written in Troyes, and not written elsewhere for Troyes, is suggested by the extremely rare petition ‘per oblationem tuam’, apparently found in only one other manuscript, the Missal in Paris (BnF lat. 865A) that gives the Troyes Missal Master his name.

(2) ‘Antoine Portail’, inscribed twice on f.202 with the dates 1591 and 1592. This is likely to be the same Antoine Portail (d.1626) who was chirurgien du Roi to Charles IX, Henri III and Henri IV, and then his conseiller secrétaire from 1591-96.

(3) Possibly in Germany by the second half of the 19th century, when the spine was strengthened with a leaf from an 1843 German text on the occult.

(4) Dealer’s pencil mark on inside upper cover ‘27483’.



Content: Calendar ff.1-12v; Gospel extract ff.13-15v; Hours of the Cross ff.16-24v; Hours of the Holy Spirit ff.25-32v; Hours of the Virgin, use of Troyes, ff.33-97v: matins f.33, lauds f.44v, prime f.60, terce f.68, none f.76, vespers f.82, compline f.90; Penitential Psalms and Litany ff.98-121v; Office of the Dead, use of Troyes, ff.122-177v; Prayers to the Virgin, Douce Dame, ff.178-190v; Prayer to the Cross ff.191-192; Suffrages ff.192-192v; Prayers in French ff.193-201v.



Illumination:

Although the manuscript was undoubtedly produced for use in Troyes, the miniatures are, remarkably and unusually, in a Franche-Comté style known in some two dozen Books of Hours of varying degrees of refinement written for use in Besançon. While manuscripts illuminated in the Champagne, Burgundy, and the Lyonnais for Besançon use are numerous, the reverse is exceptional: indeed, according to Gregory Clark, this is a unique example. The jolly illumination of this manuscript places it among a group of Hours first identified and discussed by François Avril as produced in Besançon in the atelier of an illuminator who was active for several decades from the 1440s (Les Manuscrits à peintures en France 1440-1520, 1993, p. 197). Compositional parallels can be found in a Book of Hours sold at Christie’s on 5 April 2016, lot 466 and another Hours sold at Sotheby’s on 5 July 2016, lot 63, both for the use of Besançon, but the closest stylistic comparable is a Book of Hours at the Stiftsbibliothek at Kloster Einsiedeln, MS 100. We see the same figures with flat faces, hooded eyes, large hands, and stocky bodies. The Burial scene in the present manuscript is almost identical to that in Einsiedeln MS 100, with the old man stepping into the grave to lay the wrapped body to rest. The most recent consideration of this body of codices, and specifically Einsiedeln MS 100, is in M. Milman, Les heures de la prière: Catalogue des livres d'heures de la Bibliothèque de l'abbaye d'Einsiedeln, 2003, pp. 61-67.



The subjects of the miniatures are as follows: St John on Patmos f.13; Crucifixion f.16; Pentecost f.25; Annunciation f.33; Nativity f.60; Adoration of the Magi f.82; Resurrection of souls f.98; Burial f.122; Virgin at the loom f.197.



Christie's would like to thank Professor Gregory Clark for his kind assistance.





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