ID 870817
Lot 47 | Bellemare Group
Estimate value
£ 50 000 – 80 000
Book of Hours, use of Rome, in Latin, illuminated manuscript on vellum [Paris, c.1540]
An entrancing, jewel-like tiny manuscript once in the collection of Paul Durrieu, illuminated by the Master of the Getty Epistles, one of the ‘Bellemare group’ of artists whose manuscripts rank among the highest achievements of French Renaissance painting. A sister manuscript to Liège ms. Wittert 29.
66 x 42mm. 102 leaves, complete in its current form, collation: 12, 26, 3-410, 54, 62, 7-88, 9-114, 12-138, 144, 1512, 16-174, modern foliation in pencil followed here (repeats 73), 17 lines in a minute rounded humanist hand, traces of leaf signatures, rubrics in red, line-fillers and illuminated initials on black grounds throughout, every text page with filet borders and alternately cordelières and looped designs, 12 large miniatures in Bellifontaine-style frames, two full-page title pages on ff.2 and 78v, added later in the century, written in gold on black grounds in oval cartouches within elaborate rococo strapwork surrounds with classical masks and caryatids in liquid gold and colours, elaborate infill around the rubrics and covering the rubrics on the last page added at the same time in black with interlace of liquid gold, a similar full border added on f.3 (some margins a little cropped, opening two miniatures rubbed with loss of pigment, thumbing, Calendar never supplied or perhaps removed with the Gospel extracts when title pages with black grounds were added and the bifolium which formed the outside of the gathering was folded inside out so that the Annunciation became the first miniature, Office of the Dead removed around this time too, with the rubric painted over). 18th-century vellum over pasteboards gilt.
Provenance:
(1) The present manuscript, as Christopher de Hamel pointed out in the 1995 Sotheby's description, must surely have been made for a royal patron, or for someone in the ambit of the French royal court. The cordelières that surround every second page were used by 'l’Ordre des Dames chevalières de la Cordelière', the order of Franciscan Tertiaries founded by Anne of Brittany in 1498, and it is tempting to suggest that a minute, jewel-like Hours such as this might have been produced for a royal lady. Similar cordelières and knots around the text pages are found in other Bellemare group manuscripts at the Morgan (New York, Morgan Library, MS. M. 452), and in the Hours of Anne of Austria (Paris, BnF, ms. NAL 3090) and the Dutuit Hours (Paris, Petit Palais, Dutuit Collection, ms. 37). De Hamel's suggestion that the book was produced for the marriage of a young Catherine de Medici to Henri in 1533 is appealing, although the striking similarities with an Hours in Liège (University Library, ms Wittert 29) dates its production closer to the 1540s. The two added decorative title-pages were linked by de Hamel to those found in the Hours of Henri II (Paris, BnF, ms. Latin 1429) and he further suggested that the black mauresque-decorated panels were added and the Office of the Dead removed as a consequence of Henri's death in 1559.
(2) Comte Paul Durrieu (1855-1925), art historian and connoisseur, Keeper of Paintings at the Louvre. By descent to his grandson. The manuscript was exhibited by Richard Day, Master Drawings and Manuscripts: An Exhibition of European Drawings and Manuscripts, 1480–1880, London and New York, 1990, no 1.
(3) Sotheby's, 20 June 1995, lot 121.
Content:
Hours of the Virgin, use of Rome, with Hours of the Cross and of the Holy Spirit intermixed, ff.3-78: matins f.3, lauds f.23, prime f.39, terce f.45, sext f.51, none f.56v, vespers f.62v, compline f.73; Seven Penitential Psalms and Litany ff.79-101v.
Illumination:
The splendidly rich miniatures are the work of an illuminator of the so-called ‘Bellemare group’ of artists whose manuscripts rank among the highest achievements of French Renaissance painting. The group is named for their association with Noël Bellemare, the Antwerp-trained painter who revolutionised French manuscript illumination in the second quarter of the 16th century. First discussed by Dr Myra Orth – who named the group the ‘1520s Hours Workshop’ – the atelier was responsible for illuminating at least 26 high quality manuscripts, dating from c.1522 until c.1551, the majority of these small-format Books of Hours written in a delicate humanistic script, such as the present manuscript. Today, the three principal artists to have emerged from the group are the Doheny Master, the Master of Jean de Mauléon and the Master of the Getty Epistles. The illuminators evidently shared model drawings, working in a distinctive style that evolved across almost three decades. The influence of Noël Bellemare accounts for an overarching unity of style across the group, within which an evolution can be discerned from a marked appreciation of Antwerp Mannerism with frequent borrowings from Dürer that characterise the Master of Jean de Mauléon in the 1520s to an increasing interest in Italian graphics and the work of Raphael in the Doheny Master and the Master of the Getty Epistles in the following decade.
Myra Orth discusses this manuscript in the context of two strikingly similar 'sister' manuscripts: one in Liège, ms Wittert 29, and another in Madrid, Museo Arqueológico Nacional, Ms.Inv.52.170 (see M. Orth, Renaissance Manuscripts: the Sixteenth Century, 2015, II, no 83). The Liège manuscript in particular is almost identical, though larger in size, especially in the miniatures of the Visitation, the Crucifixion, the Flight into Egypt and the Coronation of the Virgin, which are not only stylistically similar but also compositionally almost indistinguishable. The framing, too, is a close match: we see the same statuesque caryatids, scrolls, and cartouches with animal and human heads. A further aspect of our manuscript that chimes with Wittert 29 is the use of white strapwork panels with scrolling edges or cut-out sections for the presentation of text. Elizabeth L'Estrange discusses these parallels at length in 'Beyond the 1520s: A Bellmare Workshop Manuscript in Liège', Reinventing Traditions: On the Transmission of Artistic Patterns in Late Medieval Manuscript Illumination, 2015, pp.195-216. As L'Estrange indicates, the importance of our manuscript and of Wittert 29 is that they testify to an important link between the end of the workshop’s main period of production and the creation of later manuscripts in which the workshop’s artists had a hand, such as the Dinteville Hours (Paris, BnF, ms. lat. 10558) and the Recueil des rois de France (Paris, BnF, ms. fr.2848). While the Sotheby's catalogue attributed the illumination of our manuscript to the Doheny Master, named after a Book of Hours sold at Christie's, 2 December 1987, Orth repeatedly links the Liège manuscript, which must have been illuminated by the same artist as ours, to the work of the Master of the Getty Epistles, and in particular his compositions in the Hours of Anne of Austria, notably in his colouring, the soft, Raphaelesque pink-flecked faces, and the nervous gold-edges of the ample, billowing drapery.
The subjects of the miniatures are as follows: the Annunciation f.1v; St John on Patmos f.2v; the Visitation f.23; the Crucifixion f.35v; Pentecost f.37v; the Nativity f.39; the Annunciation to the Shepherds f.45; the Adoration of the Magi f.51; the Presentation in the Temple f.56v; the Flight into Egypt f.62v; the Coronation of the Virgin f.73; David in prayer f.79.
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| Place of origin: | Western Europe, France, Europe |
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| Place of origin: | Western Europe, France, Europe |
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