THE DORMITION and THE ASSUMPTION OF THE VIRGIN MARY: two miniatures on a leaf from a Book of Hours, in Latin, illuminated manuscript on vellum. [Italy (Veneto, Verona?), 14th century (2nd quarter)]

THE DORMITION and THE ASSUMPTION OF THE VIRGIN MARY: two miniatures on a leaf from a Book of Hours, in Latin, illuminated manuscript on vellum

[Italy (Veneto, Verona?), 14th century (2nd quarter)]

a leaf, c. 135 × 95mm, the recto with 10 lines of text comprising the end of Vespers and rubric for Compline, the remaining space on the pages filled with a miniature of the Dormition of the Virgin, the verso with a large miniature of the Assumption above an illuminated initial and the first three lines of text of Compline, and a horizontal panel containing portraits of two apostles(?) each in a cusped quatrefoil, and brightly coloured foliate ornament; significantly worn, with losses of pigment and gold (as is the case of the other leaves and cuttings from the same manuscript) especially the recto which appears to have formerly been glued-down; despite the damage the colours are still bright and the painting impressive; inset with conservators’ tissue supports into a double-sided frame and glazed.

PROVENANCE

1. From a manuscript that was certainly broken-up by 1866, as many of the known leaves were owned by Johann Anton Ramboux, who died in that year.
2. Sold by Christie’s, 28 November 2001, part of lot 2 (col. ill.).
3. Maggs Bros Ltd., Catalogue 1340; Illuminations [2003], no. 1 (front cover and frontispiece ills.).
4. The Boehlen Collection, Bern, not numbered.

ILLUMINATION

This leaf is from an early and exceptionally lavishly illuminated Book of Hours. It predates the period when Books of Hours became fairly standardised, and therefore exhibits several features that are very unusual. This is true not only of the style, but also of the overall conception of the series of miniatures, of the design of the individual pages, and of the choice of scenes or their iconography. To give one example of the latter, there is a scene in which a group of richly clad monks and a bishop process behind a group of women, one holding a banner. Because this miniature, like most others, has had its text removed, there are few clues to the meaning of this unexplained image.

While there is agreement that the manuscript was produced in the Veneto, stylistic attributions have varied from Venice to Verona to Padua, and proposed dates vary from the last quarter of the 14th century, to c.1350, to the second quarter. Francesca Manzari seems to have been the first person to realise that two different artists contributed to the volume, using the same page design but a different palette and with different figure styles and facial types (Manzari, 2013, n. 130), and we have followed her most recent attribution.

• The known leaves of the manuscript are described, and many of them reproduced, by Laura Alidori Battaglia (2020), and Helena Szépe (2023). In summary, in addition to the present lot, they are:
• East Lansing, Michigan, Broad Museum (Pentecost)
• La Spezia, Museo Civico Amedeo Lia (Entombment)
• London, British Library (5 cuttings of border ornament)
• Montreal, Museum of Fine Arts (2 leaves: Deposition and Harrowing of Hell; and Woman reading at a desk)
• Switzerland, private collection (Visitation)
• Vienna, Museum of Applied Arts (16 leaves with miniatures)
• Whereabouts unknown; formerly New York & Fiesole, Martello Collection (Ascension)

REFERENCES

F. Manzari, ‘Italian Books of Hours and Prayer Books in the Fourteenth Century’, in Books of Hours Reconsidered, ed. by S. Hindman and J. H. Marrow (London, 2013), pp. 153–209, citing the present leaf at pp. 168 and 201 n. 130.

Catalogue raisonné des livres d’heures conservés au Québec, ed. by B. Dunn-Lardeau (Québec, 2018), no. 1, citing the present leaf at p. 16 (‘localisation actuelle inconnue’).

L. Alidori Battaglia, Il libro d’ore in Italia tra confraternite e corti, 1275-1349: lettori, artisti, immagini (Florence, 2020), at pp. 101–18, 302–06, and 332–35, tavv. XLI–XLV, describing the present leaf at p. 303, reproducing it as fig. 45 and in colour as tavv. XLIII–XLIV (‘Ubicazione sconosciuta’), and attributing it to ‘Verona (?)’.

H.K. Szépe, ‘Fragmented and Forgotten. Italian Manuscripts in Arts, Design, and Natural History Museums: The Collectors L. Celotti and J.A. Ramboux, and Newly Discovered Miniatures by The Master of the Antiphonal Q of San Giorgio, the Master of Cardinal Antoniotto Pallavicini, and the Disassembled Italian Hours Masters’, Rivista di storia della miniatura, 26 (2022), pp. 154–76, at 154–65 citing the present leaf at p. 158 (as ‘Formerly Christie’s’).