Books of Hours

From the “golden age” of Parisian manuscript illumination, this attractive Book of Hours was richly illuminated by the chief follower of the celebrated Boucicaut Master, the Master of the Harvard Hannibal and his workshop, at the height of the Hundred Years War. An exquisite example of the quintessential early-fifteenth century Parisian illumination, this manuscript is distinguished by unusually wide margins, uncut folios, and extensive decoration, complemented by a contemporary fifteenth-century blind-stamped binding.

i (modern parchment) + 108 + iii (parchment) leaves, modern pencil foliation in upper right corner, lacking eight leaves with miniatures and several with loss of text (collation: i-iii⁶, iv^8-1 (after f. 23, with miniature), v^8-2 (after 27 and 33, with loss of text), vi^6-1 (after f. 34, with loss of text), vii^6-1 (after 40, with miniature), viii^8-2 (after 43, with miniature, and after 47, with text), ix^8-1 (after 50, with miniature), x^8-1 (after 63, with loss of text), xi^8-1 (after 70, with miniature), xii^8-1 (after 74, with miniature), xiii-xv⁸, xvi^8-1+1 (after 101, with miniature, added flyleaf after 109), xvii²), with strings visible, some quires with catchwords, ruled in red for 16 lines (written space: 98 x 62mm), written in dark brown ink in a gothic liturgical hand, rubrics in red, line fillers in gold, red, and blue with white tracery, one-line and two-line initials in burnished gold on alternately red and blue ground with white tracery, every text page with side floral borders of ivy leaves and flowers on hairline tendrils, [one] five-line initial in blue on burnished gold ground, in-filled with red and blue flowers, with white tracery, with gold and red baguette outer-side frame, FIVE LARGE ARCH-TOPPED MINIATURES above three-line illuminated initials of the same, with full floral border of ivy leaves and flowers on hairline tendrils, with acanthus sprouts emerging from gold and silver vases (miniatures often rubbed and smudged, stains in floral borders, many leaves worn and rubbed). Bound in a contemporary (original?) fifteenth-century blind-stamped binding of brown calf over wooden boards, stamped in concentric frames with small tools of ropework, the Pascal Lamb, dears, a double-headed eagle, a rosette, a monkey looking in a mirror, a flower, and a dog, three out of four quatrefoil pins with stubs of clasps on edge of upper cover, two quatrefoil pins for clasp catches on lower cover (binding worn, rebacked, new flyleaves, otherwise in very good condition). Dimensions: 210 x 150 mm.

Provenance

1. Written and illuminated in Paris. Although the liturgical use of the manuscript is unrecorded, the style of illumination is Parisian, and the calendar includes the feasts of St. Genevieve, written in red, and St. Denis, written in gold, both venerated in the city.

2. A further mention on f. 23 records its ownership by an “Anne Seurot”: “fet par moi Anne Seurot” (made by me Anne Seurot).

3. Georges de Saint-Belin (b. 1542), Lord of Biesles (Northeastern France, Champagne), who married in 1568, and by descent for two centuries, 1568 to 1731. The final leaves (ff. 107v-111v) were used as a livre de raison, recording the family’s births and marriages. The present manuscript passed to Anthoine de Messey, who married Anne de Saint-Belin in 1654, then to their eldest son Jan de Messey (b. 1655), who married in 1699, and then to his eldest son Charles Gabriel de Messey (b. 1701), who married in 1729, with the last mentions recording the births of his own children in 1730 and 1731.

4. Sotheby’s, London, 7 March 1984, lot 79, as “The Property of a Lady,” the auction description pasted on the rear pastedown; where acquired by:

5. Alan G. Thomas (1911-1992); acquired from him by:

6. Scott Schwartz, New York, his MS 21, as referred to in a label affixed to the front pastedown.

Text

ff. 1-12v, Calendar, in French, in gold, red, and blue;

ff. 13-17, Gospel Sequences;

ff. 17-20, Obsecro te, masculine form;

ff. 20-23v, O Intemerata;

ff. 24-50v, Hours of the Virgin, use unrecorded (Prime antiphon, Assumpta es, capitulum, Virgo Verbo, None antiphon, Ecce Maria), beginning and ending imperfectly (ff. 35-36 misbound, should follow f. 49; lacking numerous folios of text);

ff. 51-64v, Penitential Psalms and Litany (beginning imperfectly);

ff. 65-70v, Hours of the Cross;

ff. 71-75v, Hours of the Holy Spirit (beginning imperfectly);

ff. 76-101v, Office of the Dead, use identified (beginning imperfectly, lacking a quire);

ff. 102-105v, Fifteen Joys of the Virgin, in French (beginning imperfectly);

ff. 106-107v, Seven Requests of Our Lord, in French;

ff. 107-111v [later addition], Livre de raison, family of Georges de Saint-Belin.

Illustration

Five large arch-topped miniatures accompanied with floral borders, subjects as follow:

f. 31v, Visitation;

f. 38v, Nativity;

f. 36v, Coronation of the Virgin;

f. 48v, Presentation in the Temple;

f. 65, Crucifixion.

This attractive, large Book of Hours is richly illuminated throughout: every text page is adorned with a panel border and surrounded by very large margins. The five large arch-topped miniatures, accompanied with a generous floral border, have been listed by Gregory Clark among the production of the Master of the Harvard Hannibal (Art in a Time of War, 2016, cited p. 290). Active in Paris from c. 1410 to c. 1430, the artist was named by Millard Meiss after the frontispiece of a manuscript of Livy in the Houghton Library, depicting the Coronation of Hannibal (Harvard University, Houghton Library, Richardson MS 32; Meiss 1968). One of the most distinctive illuminators active in the capital at height of the Hundred Years War, he evidently trained with the Master of Boucicaut, as is further demonstrated by their collaboration in a manuscript of Boccaccio now in Lisbon (Gulbenkian Museum, MS LA 143).

The five remaining miniatures are reminiscent of models first introduced in the Boucicaut Hours, a milestone of Parisian illumination dated around 1410 (Paris, Musée Jacquemart-André, MS 2). Such is the case of the Nativity (fig. 1), with the Virgin kneeling before the Child set on a bed, and of the Presentation in the Temple, convincingly set in an elegant architectural setting, graced by delicately leaded windows. The soft modelling of thin brushstrokes, the rounded faces with angular noses and thin eyelids, and the highly detailed compositions of these miniatures are typical of the Harvard Hannibal Master’s style. These are especially related to the miniatures of a Book of Hours for the use of Paris (fig. 2), illuminated by the Harvard Hannibal and Fastolf Master in the early 1420s (Paris, Bibliothèque de l'Arsenal, MS 560; Clark 2016, p. 281). Such features also recur in several manuscripts illuminated in the same years by the artist (see e.g. Paris, BnF, MS nou. acq. lat. 3109; London, British Library, Sloane MS 2468; Los Angeles, Getty Museum, MS 19).

Of particular note here is the landscape of the Visitation, in which the receding depth is remarkably conveyed by the succession of a rising cliff with trees, of a river with a mill and a boat, and of a hill with a castle reduced to a camaieu d’or palette, all set under a deep blue sky with gold stars and silver clouds. These motifs are hallmarks of the innovative approach to landscape characteristic of the Boucicaut Master, an artist often regarded as the first to have perfected the principles of aerial perspective and heralded the achievements of fifteenth-century Northern painting.

Literature

Published in:

Gregory Clark. Art in a Time of War. The Master of Morgan 453 and Manuscript Illumination in Paris during the English Occupation, 1419-1435, Toronto, 2016, cited p. 290.

Further Reading:

Millard Meiss. French Painting in the Time of Jean de Berry: The Boucicaut Master, London and New York, 1968.

Roger Wieck. Time Sanctified. The Book of Hours in Medieval Art and Life, New York, 1988. 

John Plummer, The Last Flowering French Painting in Manuscripts, 1420–1530: from American Collections, New York, 1982.