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Anonymous Parisian artist

Starting price
£ 25 000
Auction dateClassic
14.12.2022 10:30UTC +01:00
Auctioneer
CHRISTIE'S
Event location
United Kingdom, London
Archive
The auction is completed. No bids can be placed anymore.
Archive
ID 870806
Lot 44 | Anonymous Parisian artist
Anonymous Parisian artist

Book of Hours, use of Paris, in Latin, illuminated manuscript on vellum [Paris, 1490s]

A fine Paris Book of Hours painted by an artist whose work is associable with the Master of Martainville 183.



170 x 110mm. i + 162 + i, collation: 113, 2-88, 97 (lacking iii), 10-138, 147 (lacking ii), 15-208, sporadic modern pencil foliation, some prickings evident, catchwords, 17 lines, ruled space: 89 x 56mm, rubrics in blue, one-line initials in liquid gold on alternating blue and red grounds and two-line initials in blue with white infilling on red grounds throughout, 5 small miniatures within three-sided borders, 11 large arch-topped miniatures above three-line illuminated initials all within full borders of different design comprising, variously, acanthus, flowers, birds, animals, knotted boughs in liquid gold, and trellised compartments (lacking two leaves with miniatures for none and the Hours of the Cross, marginal losses to ff.2-10, occasional marginal staining). Early 20th-century gilt-stamped vellum (a little discoloured). Modern box.



Provenance:

Judge Dunlop, of Ashbrook House, Edinburgh: his sale at Sotheby's, 29 July 1924, lot 172.



Contents: ruled blank f.1; Calendar ff.2-13; Gospel extracts ff.14-18v; Obsecro te and O intemerata ff.19-25; Hours of the Virgin, use of Paris ff.26-91: matins f.26, lauds f.47v, prime f.58, terce f.63v, sext f.67v, none (beginning imperfectly) f.71, vespers f.74v, compline f.81; Penitential Psalms and Litany ff.92-108v; Hours of the Cross (beginning imperfectly) ff.109-114v; Hours of the Holy Spirit ff.115-120; Office of the Dead, use of Paris ff.120v-162.



Illumination:

Our artist was working in Paris at the end of the 15th century in the ambit of Jean Pichore (fl. c.1490-1521), whose enormously successful workshop dominated the production of Books of Hours in Paris in the first decades of the 16th century (see C. Zöhl, Jean Pichore: Buchmaler, Graphiker und Verleger in Paris um 1500, 2004). Among the many artists who followed or collaborated with Pichore and his workshop was the Master of Martainville 183, named for a Book of Hours in the Bibliothèque municipale in Rouen: the generous use of gold to highlight draperies and hair in our manuscript is reminiscent of that in a Book of Hours sold at Christie’s (23 April 2021, lot 13) on which the Martainville Master collaborated in the 1490s. Some of the facial types in a Book of Hours attributed to the Martainville Master in Vienna (ÖNB Cod. 1927) reappear in our manuscript, along with simplified renditions of the Vienna Hours’ border devices of knotted golden boughs and grotesques and birds (see O. Pächt and D. Thoss, Die illiminierten Handschriften und Inkunabeln der Österreichischen Nationalbibliothek, Französische Schule II, 1977, pp.73-81).



The subjects of the large miniatures are as follows: St John on Patmos f.14; Annunciation f.26; Visitation f.47v; Nativity f.58; Annunciation to the Shepherds f.63v; Adoration of the Magi f.67v; Flight into Egypt f.74v; Coronation of the Virgin f.81; David in Prayer f.92; Pentecost f.115; Job on the Dungheap f.120v.



The subjects of the small miniatures are as follows: St Luke f.16; St Matthew f.17v; St Mark f.18; Virgin and Child f.19; Pieta f.22v.





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No VAT on hammer price or buyer's premium.
Place of origin:Western Europe, France, Europe
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10.12.2022 – 13.12.2022
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