Book of Hours, fragment of the Hours of the Cross and the Office of the Dead, in Latin, illuminated manuscript on vellum [north-eastern Italy, c.1460-70]

52 leaves (plus one modern paper and vellum flyleaf at each end), 165mm. by 112mm., fragment, catchwords, collation: i4 (iii-vi wanting), ii-vii8, 13 lines in a gothic bookhand, written space 85mm. by 60mm., rubrics in red, one-line initials in red, blue, green or gold, 2-line initials in gold on blue and red or green grounds, two large historiated initials enclosing the Man of Sorrows (fol.1r) with full borders of flowers and banderoles and the Raising of Lazarus (fol.3r) with full white vine borders including green parrots, borders slightly cropped, illumination rubbed in places, vellum slightly stained, else in good condition, in a nineteenth-century red leather binding

This little book presents a puzzling mix of artistic styles. The delicate script, the first decorated page and the borders of the second are clearly Italian humanist, but the initial contained on that second decorated page is strikingly franco-flemish. Jonathan Alexander notes that Naples formed an artistic centre of book illumination with a strong influence of Northern styles (Italian Renaissance Illuminations, 1977, pp.22-3). The manuscript here may provide another example of a foreign style but in the north-east of Italy.