A HALF-LENGTH APOSTLE, attributed to Nikolaus Kuthner, a historiated initial on a leaf from a Breviary, in Latin, illuminated manuscript on vellum [Bohemia (probably Prague), late 14th or early 15th century (c. 1400)]

A HALF-LENGTH APOSTLE, attributed to Nikolaus Kuthner, a historiated initial on a leaf from a Breviary, in Latin, illuminated manuscript on vellum

[Bohemia (probably Prague), late 14th or early 15th century (c. 1400)]

a leaf, c. 310 × 220mm, written in two columns of 38 lines, in prickly gothic script, medieval foliation ‘113’, the text (‘ascensionem dominicam designavit … vado & venio ad vos all[eluia]’) comprising the end of the feast of the Ascension (the Thursday forty days after Easter Sunday, and ten days before Pentecost) and start of Pentecost, decorated with flourished initials and illuminated with a LARGE HISTORIATED INITIAL ‘V’(eni sancte spiritus) enclosing a half-length bearded male figure looking upward, probably an apostle looking up at the tongues of fire at Pentecost; with the pencil stock number ‘VM7275’ of Bruce Ferrini; some wear and dirt in the lower corner and at the extreme edges, but generally in fine condition with wide margins, in a double-sided giltwood frame.

PROVENANCE

1. From a manuscript broken up by 1966, when three leaves were in the collection of Carl Richartz.
2. Bruce Ferrini, of Akron, Ohio; presumably bought from him by:
3. A private collection, USA, sold in our rooms, 3 July 2018, lot 3; bought by:
4. The Boehlen Collection, Bern, apparently unnumbered

The present leaf can be added to the corpus of works attributed to Nikolaus Kuthner, who contributed to the illumination of the multi-volume Wenceslas Bible, a deluxe manuscript commissioned by King Wenceslaus IV of Bohemia (1378–1419) and made in Prague in the 1390s, who has been studied especially by Maria Thiesen (in Jenni & Theisen, 2014): ‘his style is characterized by small, very mobile figures with round heads, button eyes and large wedge-shaped noses … his doll-like figures have an astonishingly large repertoire of narrative gestures with which they are able to eloquently represent the biblical text’.

Three other leaves from the same parent manuscript, each with a historiated initial, are known (cited by Thiesen, 2014, p. 41), all formerly in the collection of Carl Richartz, Amsterdam (his MS 37), and sold by Kornfeld & Klipstein, Bern, Auktion 161, 8 June 1977, lot 200:

l Initial D(ixi custodiam): Psalm 38. King David Pointing to his mouth

l Initial D(eus patris sanctificet): First Sunday in Advent. St Paul(?), with his hand to his beard

l Initial P(assionem sancti Andree): St Andrew, holding his Cross

REFERENCES

U. Jenni and M. Theisen, Mitteleuropäische Schulen IV: die Hofwerkstätten König Wenzels IV. (ca. 1380–1400), Verzeichnis der illuminierten Handschriften und Inkunabeln der Österreichischen Nationalbibliothek (Vienna, 2014), esp. pp. 38–41