Single leaf, 113 by 63mm, with 21 lines of a fine French humanist hand, red rubrics and simple capitals, paraphs in gold within black square frames, one- and 2-line initials in black or gold on contrasting grounds with line-fillers as intertwined ropes, sprigs of foliage and geometric patterns in same, the whole text enclosed within a gold border that terminates in two looping gold tassels at foot, original foliation '49' and '50', small rectangular discolouration at centre-head of each column, slight darkening to edges, else excellent condition.
From a refined French Renaissance Book of Hours produced by the 'workshop of the 1520s Hours Masters', now identified as Noël Bellemare (fl. 1512-46) and his assistants. The presence of the knotted ropework borders in a number of Books of Hours produced by this group of artists, has been taken as a reference to the Cordelieres, or Franciscan tertiaries, suggesting their production for royal women devoted to that Order. The parent book, already imperfect, later belonged to the bibliophile, Baron Jerome Pichon (1812-96), his sale in Paris, 18 April 1869, lot 18, before reappearing with Sam Fogg, his cat. 14 (1991), no. 39, and then dispersed. Other leaves are described by S. N. Fliegel in The Jeanne Miles Blackburn Collection of Manuscript Illuminations, Cleveland Museum of Art, 1999, no. 69
