Eastern French artist - photo 1
Eastern French artist - photo 2

Eastern French artist

Lot 25
09.12.2020 00:00UTC +00:00
Classic
Starting price
£ 5 000
AuctioneerCHRISTIE'S
Event locationUnited Kingdom, London
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ID 470185
Lot 25 | Eastern French artist
Estimate value
£ 5 000 – 8 000
Eastern French artist

Funeral Mass, eastern France, perhaps Besançon, c.1430-1450

FUNERAL MASS, miniature on a partial leaf from a Book of Hours, illuminated manuscript on vellum [eastern France, perhaps Besançon, c.1430-1450].



An unusual depiction of the Funeral Mass, showing the kissing of the paten, from a Book of Hours painted in eastern France; perhaps by the same artist who painted a Book of Hours for the use of Besançon now held at the Morgan Library (MS 293).



148 x 85mm. The miniature would have opened the Office of the Dead, four-line illuminated initial, five lines of text, 15 lines on the verso (cropped around the arch top of the miniature and the edges of the baguette borders surrounding the text). Mounted. Provenance: (1) Sotheby’s, 24 June 1986, lot 52 (part). (2) Dr. Jörn Günther, Collecting Miniatures, cat no 9, 2006.



A miniature cut from the same Book of Hours depicting the Virgin and Child Enthroned was sold alongside the present miniature in 1986; another sister – St Margaret and the Dragon – was sold at Sotheby’s, 8 December 1981, lot 25 and is now held at Vanderbilt University, Tennessee (Acc. # 1983.014). These miniatures are discussed in Plotzek, Andachtsbücher des Mittelalters aus Privatbesitz, N° 19 (Köln, 1987; p.109; the first two illustrated), who assumes on the basis of the decoration that they must have come from a high-quality Book of Hours created in Paris between 1420 and 1430 and links their compositions to those emanating from the atelier of the Boucicaut Master, believing Christopher de Hamel’s identification of the style of the Master of the Munich Golden Legend less likely. In fact, scholarly consensus now puts the production of the parent Hours at a later date, to the east of Paris. François Avril situated it between Dijon and Besançon between 1430-1450, suggesting a stylistic similarity with the miniatures in Cod.1800 at the Österreichischen Nationalbibliothek in Vienna, the Book Altar of Philip the Good. Dagmar Thoss, who edited the 1991 facsimile edition of Cod.1800, agreed that the miniatures should be considered as part of the same stylistic group, while noting that they were of higher quality. Roger Wieck has attributed the miniatures to an artist close to – or, perhaps, directly identifiable as – the artist who painted Morgan MS 293, a Book of Hours for the use of Besançon produced c.1430.

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