Anonymous Parisian illuminator - photo 1
Anonymous Parisian illuminator - photo 2

Anonymous Parisian illuminator

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£ 21 420
Auction dateClassic
12.07.2023 00:00UTC +01:00
Auctioneer
CHRISTIE'S
Event location
United Kingdom, London
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ID 993195
Lot 5 | Anonymous Parisian illuminator
Anonymous Parisian illuminator

Scenes from the Infancy of Christ, a full-page quadripartite miniature from a Psalter [Paris, c.1340]

A leaf from what would have been one of the most lavishly illuminated manuscripts of the period, probably produced for a royal patron.



186 x 140mm, single leaf with full-page miniature divided into four scenes within an outer gold frame, depicting (i) Herod Directing the Massacre of the Innocents, (ii) The Presentation in the Temple, (iii) The Flight into Egypt (with the Fall of the False Idols), and (iv) The Virgin Mary Finding Christ among the Doctors, the reverse blank (some smudging and flaking of pigments, the miniature trimmed to its edges). Mounted and framed.



Provenance:

(1) From a volume that was broken-up before 1834, when a leaf was acquired by the Bodleian Library in a printed book from the collection of Richard Heber (d. 1833); two more leaves were in the P. Gélis Didot sale, Paris, 12–13 April 1897, lot 59, and are now in the Fitzwilliam Museum.



(2) ‘The Property of a Gentleman’, sold at Sotheby’s, 28 March 1923, lot 707, bought by Rosenbach for £20.



(3) Sold anonymously at Sotheby's, 14 July 1981, lot 26, with full-page plate, bought by Price for £3,800.



Illumination:

This leaf formed part of a series of about forty-five scenes on eleven leaves that prefaced a Psalter. The parent manuscript had two other series of miniatures, one depicting scenes from the Acts of the Apostles and Lives of Saints (including St Denis, patron saint of Paris), and the other from the Life of Joseph: in all there would have been more than a hundred miniatures, making this one of the most lavishly illuminated manuscripts of the period, suggesting an aristocratic, or even royal, patron.



In much of the literature since 1990 the manuscript is attributed to north-eastern France (Metz?), c.1350 or c.1320, but François Avril has observed that the style of illumination and pen-flourishing point decisively to Paris, and some details of the clothing worn by male figures points to a date around 1340. The present miniature exemplifies the use of architectural framings (pointed arcades and round arches, each with crockets), abstract patterned backgrounds, a palette dominated by blue and an orange-red, and figures, most of whom are depicted in three-quarter profile, whose features are pen-drawn in reddish-brown ink.



Other miniatures are now at the Fitzwilliam Museum, Cambridge; the Bodleian Library, Oxford; the British Library, London; the Art Institute, Chicago; the Lilly Library, Bloomington; and the Royal Ontario Museum, Toronto.





Literature

Christopher de Hamel, Gilding the Lilly: A Hundred Medieval and Illuminated Manuscripts in the Lilly Library (Bloomington, 2010), no. 43, citing the present leaf at p. 96.

Peter Kidd, The McCarthy Collection, III: French Miniatures (London, 2021), no 80, citing the present leaf at p. 284.
Place of origin:Western Europe, France, Europe
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12.07.2023 – 12.07.2023
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