Robert Boyvin (active 1487-1536) - photo 1
Robert Boyvin (active 1487-1536) - photo 2
Robert Boyvin (active 1487-1536) - photo 3
Robert Boyvin (active 1487-1536) - photo 4
Robert Boyvin (active 1487-1536) - photo 5
Robert Boyvin (active 1487-1536) - photo 6

Robert Boyvin (active 1487-1536)

Lot 34
13.07.2022 10:30UTC +00:00
Classic
Sold
£ 75 600
AuctioneerCHRISTIE'S
Event locationUnited Kingdom, London
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ID 794578
Lot 34 | Robert Boyvin (active 1487-1536)
Estimate value
£ 60 000 – 90 000
Robert Boyvin (active 1487-1536)

Book of Hours, use of Rouen, in Latin and French, illuminated manuscript on vellum [Rouen, 1490s]

An Hours illuminated by Robert Boyvin, the most celebrated Rouen painter at the turn of the 16th century and one of the select circle of artists to win the favour of the Renaissance patron Georges d’Amboise, featuring a striking double-page Annunciation miniature.



187 x 128mm. 87 leaves, complete, collation: 16, 28, 39 (of 10, x a cancelled blank), 4-54 (ff.28-29 misbound, should follow ff.23), 6-108, 116, 122 (f.77 misbound, should go after f.72), 138, modern pencil foliation, 25 lines, ruled space: 113 x 70mm, rubrics in red, one-line illuminated initials and line fillers on red and gold grounds throughout, two-line initials in white on gold grounds, every text page with panel borders of acanthus, flowers, birds and grotesques on liquid gold grounds along the outer edge of the text, 24 calendar miniatures within three-quarter borders, one double-page miniature within architectural borders, 14 large miniatures within architectural borders or full panel borders as before (certain of the Calendar miniatures repainted, leaves with modern vellum supports added during rebind). Reconstructed réemboitage reusing parts of a 16th- or 17th-century German binding of blindstamped pigskin.



Provenance:

The liturgical use is for Rouen and both the Calendar – with the feasts of St Gervasius (June 19) and St Romanus (23 October) in gold – and the Litany – which includes the bishop-saints Ansbert, Audoin, Mellonius, and Victricius – feature saints venerated locally. The use is consistent with the style of illumination, suggesting that the manuscript was both produced in Rouen and intended for use by a local patron; the couple for whom the manuscript was likely made appear in two of the miniatures, the woman kneeling before the Virgin on f.74, while on f.85 the man appears before Christ, supported by St Stephen.



Content: Calendar, in French ff.1-6; Gospel extracts ff.7-11; Obsecro te ff.11-11v; O intemerata ff.12-14; Salve regina ff.14-14v; Hours of the Virgin, use of Rouen, with abbreviated Hours of the Cross and of the Holy Spirit intermixed ff.16v-47: matins f.16v (opening incompletely), lauds f.22, matins of the Cross f.26, matins of the Holy Spirit f.27, prime f.28, terce f.33v, sext f.36, none f.38, vespers f.40v, compline f.44; Seven Penitential Psalms and Litany ff.48-58; Office of the Dead ff.58v-73v; Prayers to the Virgin and further suffrages ff.74-84v; O bone Jesu ff.85v-86v; ruled blank f.87.



Illumination: The miniatures are the work of the illuminator Robert Boyvin, documented in Rouen from 1487 until 1536. From a family with longstanding connections to the book trade, he emerged from the shadow of his predecessor, the Master of the Échevinage de Rouen, to become the leading illuminator in the Norman city. Boyvin won the favour of Georges d’Amboise, Cardinal Archbishop of Rouen, for whom he completed a splendid copy of Seneca’s Epîtres in 1503 (Paris, BnF, lat.8551), and painted more than fifty manuscripts across his long and successful career, mostly Books of Hours such as these (see I. Delauney, 'Le manuscrit enluminé à Rouen au temps du cardinal Georges d'Amboise: l'oeuvre de Robert Boyvin et de Jean Serpin', Annales de Normandie, 3 (1995), pp.211-244).



Boyvin's is a distinctive style, his characters almost always having rather long and triangular noses, the men with narrow chins and the women porcelain complexions. His drapery has angular contours and in his finest work, such as the present Hours, he shows a particular skill and aesthetic sense in the use of gold cross-hatching used to highlight and model. His landscape backgrounds are dotted with little shrubs and bushes. The double-page Annunciation miniature is an intriguing addition to these Hours: representing the best of Boyvin’s work, luminous with liquid gold, its inclusion was presumably a last-minute alteration by the artist to the iconographical programme, one which sees the opening text for matins of the Hours of the Virgin omitted to allow for a full-page depiction of the Angel Gabriel on f.16. The double-page miniature format is associated with artists working in Bourges at the turn of the 16th century, in particular, the Master of Spencer 6; its inclusion is a testament to the fluidity of artistic exchange between French centres by this time and, perhaps, points to a specific request made by the commissioner of the manuscript.



Half of the miniatures in the present manuscript have borders of golden prismatic piers and statues in canopies niches of the type adopted in Rouen – again, from Bourges – in the 1490s and employed by Boyvin in a number of his Books of Hours (cf. Cherbourg, Bibl. Mun. ms.5; New York, Morgan Library, MS Heineman 1 and M.261). The remainder of the miniatures are set within the more traditional panel borders of acanthus, flowers, birds and grotesques on liquid gold grounds used by his predecessor, the Master of the Échevinage de Rouen.



The subjects of the full-page miniatures are as a follows: St John on Patmos f.7; The Annunciation ff.15v-16; Visitation f.22; Crucifixion f.26; Pentecost f.27; Nativity f.30; Annunciation to the Shepherds f.33v; Adoration of the Magi f.36; Presentation in the Temple f.38; Flight into Egypt f.40v; Coronation of the Virgin f.44; David rebuked by Nathan f.48; Job on the Dungheap f.58v; Virgin and Child with kneeling patron f.74; Christ as Man of Sorrows with kneeling patron supported by St Stephen f.85.





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