St Claude, from the Hours of Jean Lallemant the Elder - photo 1
St Claude, from the Hours of Jean Lallemant the Elder - photo 2

St Claude, from the Hours of Jean Lallemant the Elder

Lot 139
28.01.2025 10:00UTC -05:00
Classic
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CHRISTIE'S
AuctioneerCHRISTIE'S
Event locationUSA, New York
ID 1360855
Lot 139 | St Claude, from the Hours of Jean Lallemant the Elder
Estimate value
$ 4 000 – 6 000
St Claude, miniature on a leaf from the Hours of Jean Lallemant the Elder, illuminated manuscript on vellum [Bourges and Tours, c.1498]

A splendid example of the work of Jean Pichore: a long-lost miniature from the Hours of Jean Lallemant the Elder.

c.203 x 121mm, by sight; 337 x 248mm, frame. The full-page miniature with St Claude raising a man from the dead opening the suffrage to the Saint, verso with 28 lines of text within a three-sided border, two illuminated initials, rubrics in red (a few creases and losses of pigment, e.g. to the face of the saint, to his robes and to the trouser-leg of one of the figures). Mounted and in a double-sided frame.

Provenance:
(1) Jean Lallemant the Elder (d.1533), mayor of Bourges and Receiver General of Normandy from 1494-1517, son of Jean Lallemant (d.1494), and brother of Guillaume Lallemant and Jean Lallemant the Younger: Lallemant coat of arms (gules a chevron or with three roses argent arranged 2 and 1) within a gold wreath supported by blue cherubim (identical to Baltimore, Walters Art Museum W.459.1R) in the lower margin and red cherubim in the upper margin.
(2) Edmond F. Bonaventure (d.1918), bibliophile and rare book dealer: his sale, New York, American Art Association, 8-9 May 1936, lot 376 (ill.). [The original catalogue from this sale is included with this lot].
(3) Collection of Kate and George Elderkin and by descent to present owner.

The Lallemants were an important family of patrons, receveurs généraux for Normandy from the time of Louis XI, mayors of Bourges, and founding members of the civic confraternity of that city, the Table Ronde. Fifteen manuscripts made for the family survive: Jean Lallemant père owned a copy of Josephus’s Antiquités judaïques (Paris, Bib. Arsenal, MS. 3686) illuminated in 1489; in c.1495 Guillaume Lallemant had Jean Poyet illuminate a Missal (New York, Morgan Library and Museum, MS. M.495); and Jean Lallemant the Younger commissioned an impressive series of iconographically sophisticated Books of Hours (including Washington DC, Library of Congress, Rosenwald MS.11; Baltimore, Walters Art Museum, MS. W.446 and W.451; and Philadelphia, Free Library, Lewis E 87, which is missing all of its miniatures but whose pages are filled with blue and red six-winged seraphim). In addition to the his Hours, Jean Lallemant the Elder owned an elaborate manuscript of Boethius’s Consolation of Philosophy (Paris, BnF, Latin 6643) dated 1498, which bears his coat of arms. He also owned a splendid copy of Virgil’s Aeneid (Dijon, BM, MS. 493).

The Hours of Jean Lallemant the Elder survives today across several institutions, including the British Library in London (Add. MS 39641), the Walters Art Museum in Baltimore (W. 459), and the Fitzwilliam Museum in Cambridge (Marlay Cuttings, Fr. 7). The Calendar was in Paris in 1953 and part of the Rohan-Chabot collection. The manuscript was already fragmentary by the end of the 16th century: 34 leaves sold in Paris in 1884 from the library of Ambroise Firmin-Didot contained an ownership inscription dating to 1599 and recording a gift from the Parisian notary Nicolas Le Camus to his daughter Jeanne in 1609 (Paris, Catalogue des livres précieux, manuscrits et imprimés faisant partie de la bibliothèque de M. Ambroise Firmin-Didot [...], 10-14 June 1884, lot 24; previously in the collection of Jean-Jacques de Bure, his sale, Paris, Catalogue des livres rares [...], 1 December 1853, lot 45). The British Library fragment was previously in the collection of Robert Curzon (1810-1873), while the Walters Art Museum fragment was owned by Gruel and Engelmann, dealers and bookbinders, in Paris in the 19th century and acquired from them between 1895-1931. It is evident that a number of single leaves with miniatures were circulating at an early date: Firmin-Didot added to the de Bure fragment by acquiring four single leaves with the Beheading of John the Baptist, the Martyrdom of St Lawrence, the Martyrdom of St Catherine, and Peter of Luxembourg; in 1867 Curzon added a miniature with Christ appearing to his mother which he had acquired from John Ashley; other single leaves now in Cambridge were acquired in 1912.

Illumination:
The Hours of Jean Lallemant the Elder was illuminated by three artists: the first, Jean Poyet, is responsible for the three miniatures in the British Library fragment and at least four of the miniatures in the Firmin-Didot fragment. The unique borders, personalised with the attributes of Jean Lallement the Elder – the coat of arms, the skulls, the putti – are identical to those found in the Boethius made for for him in 1498: they are the work of an illuminator from the circle of Jean Pichore (fl. c.1490-1521), an artist 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). It is Jean Pichore himself, likely working on models designed by Poyet, who is responsible for three of the miniatures in the British Library fragment (ff.1, 35v and 38v), the miniature with the Crucifixion in Baltimore, and the Marlay miniature in Cambridge. We see his hand in the present miniature too: representative of his style are the saturated palette juxtaposing rich yellows, reds, greens and blues with immaculate whites and the strong-nosed figures.
Place of origin:France
Auction house category:Medieval & renaissance manuscripts
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