A FUNERAL SERVICE, THE NATIVITY, and THE VIRGIN AND CHILD, three historiated initials on three leaves from an early Book of Hours, in Latin and French, illuminated manuscript on vellum [Northern France (Picardy, Noyon?), 14th century (c. 1370s)]

A FUNERAL SERVICE, THE NATIVITY, and THE VIRGIN AND CHILD, three historiated initials on three leaves from an early Book of Hours, in Latin and French, illuminated manuscript on vellum

[Northern France (Picardy, Noyon?), 14th century (c. 1370s)]

three leaves, each c. 190 × 160mm, with 16 lines written in gothic script, comprising the beginnings of (a) the Office of the Dead and (b) Prime in the Hours of the Virgin, both in Latin, and (c) a prayer in French, EACH ILLUMINATED WITH A LARGE HISTORIATED INITIAL six to eight lines high, and borders incorporating dragons, an angel, etc., depicting, respectively (a) a Funeral Service with three tonsured clerics singing from a choirbook, with square musical notation, on a lectern, and a group of black-clad mourners, beside a bier with four lighted candles, (b) the Nativity, and (c) The Virgin and Child; together in a velvet mount in a double-sided giltwood frame.

PROVENANCE

1. Probably produced in Picardy: the calendar of the parent volume (sale in our rooms, 6 December 2001, lot 15), includes as major feasts, in red, St Quentin (31 October), St Ouen (24 August), and three feasts of St Eligius (25 June, 1 September, 1 December), bishop of Noyon and Tournai, all of which suggests an origin at Noyon, Amiens, or another town in that region.
2. The Cistercian abbey at Arnsburg, Germany, founded in 1174, approximately half-way between Frankfurt and Marburg: inscribed ‘Bibliothec Arnsburg’; at the secularisation in 1802/3 the abbey was given to:
3. The Counts of Solms-Laubach, at Schloss Laubach (approximately 10 miles / 15 km north-east of Arnsburg): this manuscript was described as being in their library by Vaubel in 1926, but was deaccessioned and broken-up within a few years: leaves were offered by Gilhofer & Ranschburg, Luzern, Catalogue 128 [1929], nos. 270, 271, and 284; and again in their Lager-Katalog XIX [1929/30?], nos. 11–14. One leaf was acquired in 1939 by the Metropolitan Museum, New York (inv. no. 39.81.4).
4. Sold in our rooms, 8 December 1981, lot 23 (full-page ill.).
5. The Boehlen Collection, Bern, MS 1307.

The leaves and the parent volume are discussed in ‘Leaves from a 14th-Century Picard(?) Book of Hours’, 8 September 2018, at mssprovenance.blogspot.com. The parent volume had a fairly standard series of texts and images except at the end, where it had three different versions of the Virgin and Child, including one of the present leaves.

TEXT AND ILLUMINATION

The style is distinctive: faces are drawn with three parallel curved lines to represent the eyebrow, upper eye-socket, and upper eyelid; mouths are downturned; hands are usually large; blue and orange dominate the palette; and draperies are modelled with remarkable fluidity.

(a) The Office of the Dead, with a rubric in French, ‘as vespres des mors antienne’: the initials depicts three tonsured and four black-clad mourners behind a bier and four large candles on tall candlesticks; the clerics sing from a choirbook in which square musical notation is visible and the words ‘Domine ne’, probably Psalm 6 (Domine ne in furore tuo …’), the first of the Seven Penitential Psalms, chanted as part of the funeral service.

(b) Prime in the Hours of the Virgin: the Virgin lies on her bed, with the swaddled infant, Ox, Ass, and Joseph behind.

(c) A rare prayer in French: ‘O tres doulce mere dame sainte Marie vierge sans corruption benoite pardurablement mere de dieu …’ (also found in Manchester, John Rylands University Library, French MS 3); with an initial depicting the Virgin enthroned, holding a flower(?), with the child on her lap.

REFERENCES

H.O. Vaubel, Die Miniaturenhandschriften … der Gräfl. Solmsischen Bibliothek zu Laubach (Giessen, 1926), no. V.

Gilhofer & Ranschburg, Catalogue 218: A Beautiful Collection of Fine and Rare Books, Autographs, Manuscripts, Miniatures … (Vienna [1929]), nos. 270, 271, and 284.

Gilhofer & Ranschburg, Lager-Katalog XIX: Einzel-Miniaturen des XIII. bis XV. Jahrhunderts von ausgesuchter Qualität … (Luzern [1929/30]), nos. 11–14.