Western Manuscripts and Miniatures

Charming miniature from the circle or workshop of the leading illuminator in Paris during the first two decades of the fifteenth century.

178 x 128 mm. Single leaf, ruled in red for 15 lines (written space: 56 x 91 mm), written in brown ink in a formal gothic bookhand, one-line initials in burnished gold on alternately red and blue ground with white tracery, line-fillers in same, one THREE-LINE ILLUMINATED INITIAL in red on burnished gold ground, in-filled with red, blue, and vermillion red flowers, with white tracery, extending into a three-sided bar border of vineleaves on burnished gold ground, ONE LARGE ARCH-TOPPED MINIATURE framed with gold (water damage on the recto, resulting in ink transfer and losses of pigment throughout the border, not affecting the miniature nor verso of the leaf, browning at edges, else in very good condition).

This leaf with the miniature of David in Prayer introduced the Penitential Psalms of an unidentified Parisian Book of Hours. The style of the miniature, the surrounding bars on burnished gold, and the full-border decoration locate its illumination in Paris in the 1410s. Several similarities demonstrate the artist’s proximity with the Boucicaut Master. He frames David centrally with a curved band of barren ground that eventually unites with the far shoreline of the river. He places two tree trunks in the forefront and a couple of dwarf trees on either side of David, thus providing a reminder of landscape elements without interrupting the clarity of the image, a process used systematically by the Boucicaut Master in the Hours of Jean de Boucicaut and elsewhere. The footbridge crossing the river also derives from the Boucicaut Master and is found in the Annunciation to the Shepherds of the Boucicaut Hours (Paris, Musée Jacquemart André, MS 2).

The artist may be the same illuminator who collaborated with the Mazarine Master, the Boethius Master, and another anonymous artist on a Parisian Book of Hours around 1405-1415, contributing four miniatures: f. 81, Presentation in the Temple, f. 85v, Flight into Egypt, f. 184v, Virgin and Child and f. 191, Last Judgment (Jörn Günther, Parchment and Gold, Catalogue 11, 2015, no. 25, pp. 122-127). Similar stylistic features include the small inclined faces with droopy eyes, the thick gold outlines on the blue capes, the club-like large hands, the forms of the grasses drawn in thin gold strokes, the starry sky, and the cusped edge of the burnished gold on the miniature’s rounded top.

Provenance
Private collection, California, USA, MS 185.

Sister leaves
A sister leaf from the same manuscript, depicting the Annunciation for the opening of the Hours of the Virgin, was sold by Phillip J. Pirages (Catalogue 75, lot 378). In the outer border of this leaf, an angel holds the as-yet unidentified coat of arms of a lady, who must have been the patron of the manuscript.

LITERATURE
Further reading: Millard Meiss, French Painting in the Time of Jean de Berry, The Boucicaut Master, London, 1968.

Freeman’s | Hindman thank Senior Consultant Sandra Hindman and Elliott Adam for their assistance in preparing this sale.