Western Manuscripts and Miniatures

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Lot 36
  • 36

Book of Hours, Use of Sarum, in Latin, illuminated manuscript on vellum [England (probably London), c.1390-95]

Estimate
10,000 - 15,000 GBP
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Description

  • vellum
113 leaves (plus 5 blank endleaves), 121mm. by 85mm., wanting a single leaf after fol.29 and probably also a frontispiece before fol.7, else complete, collation: i6, ii-iii8, iv7 (wanting viii), v-xiv8, xv4, horizontal catchwords in penwork cartouches, single column, 16 lines in dark brown ink in a fine late gothic bookhand, rubrics in red and purple, 2- to 4-line initials in burnished gold on red and blue grounds with white penwork, five large initials in pink with white tracery enclosing ivy and foliage on burnished gold infill, all on coloured panel grounds with three-quarter borders of coloured branching stems of ivyleaves, five very large initials in pale blue with white tracery, infilled as above, with full bar-borders sprouting clumps of foliage and flowers, some staining and minor thumbing, overall in good condition, late sixteenth- or seventeenth-century limp vellum, green silk ties (these now somewhat defective)

Provenance

provenance

1. Written and illuminated in London (or its vicinity) in the last decade of the fourteenth century by the same artist who decorated fol.9r of British Library, Addit. 10,104 (a copy of Ranulph Higden's Polychronicon, owned by the chronicler Adam of Usk). The same artist may also have worked on Bodleian, MS Bodley 62 (Book of Hours with Bridgettine additions, c. 1400).

2. Taken to Italy by an early owner: in an apparent Italian binding, and with the inscriptions Oficio della Madonna on spine, and libro d' la camilla on endleaf.

3. Sold in our rooms, 18 June 1991, lot 134; bought by the present owner.

Catalogue Note

text

A Calendar (fol.1r); the Hours of the Virgin, with Matins (7r), Lauds (16r), Prime (30v), Terce (35v), Sext (38v), None (41v), Vespers (44r), Compline (46v); Penitential Psalms (52v); and Psalms of Degree (64r) with a Litany; Office of the Dead (76r).