69 leaves (plus 4 original vellum endleaves at back, and 4 modern paper endleaves at each end), bound too tightly to collate but with no apparent textual losses, perhaps wanting a full-page miniature from opening of the Office of the Dead facing the three-quarter miniature of Job in his dungheap (but this perhaps never included in original volume), text in single column of 32 lines of an excellent late medieval bookhand, capitals touched in yellow, deep burgundy rubrics, 2- to 4-line initials in gold on coloured grounds with white foliage overlaid, numerous text leaves with borders of sprays of acanthus leaves and other foliage on burgundy and dull-gold panels (these panels often forming geometric panels or shapes), the Calendar with zodiac signs and occupations above and below text (24 small miniatures in total), these accompanied by floral borders as above (two with a monkey carrying her young on her back and a winged demon-monkey), ninety-three whimsical bas-de-page mins (see below), eleven marginal miniatures with saints, five large miniatures (each approximately a third of the page in height), thirteen three-quarter miniatures, five full page miniatures, some scuffs and small spots, slight flaking from paint in some places, overall in good condition, 222 by 145mm.; bound in nineteenth-century brown leather over pasteboards, gilt tooled in double fillet with ""Missal"" on spine, the original spine repaired and the leather relaid over newer leather, in robust condition. THIS IS A GLORIOUS BOOK OF HOURS, EXTRA-ILLUSTRATED WITH NEARLY A HUNDRED MARGINAL MINIATURES, IN ADDITION TO ITS TWENTY-THREE LARGE MINIATURES, AND WITH A GRAND ENGLISH NOBLE PROVENANCE, APPARENTLY UNSEEN ON THE OPEN MARKET IN NEARLY SIXTY YEARS
Provenance: 1. Written and illustrated in northern France, perhaps Paris, in the first quarter of the sixteenth century. 2. Philip Henry Kerr (1882-1940), 11th Marquess of Lothian, British politician and ambassador to America, and this from his celebrated library at Blickling Hall, and this once sharing shelf-space with the glorious eighth-century Blickling Psalter, one of the finest English manuscripts to come to the market in the last century, and the tenth-century Blickling Homilies in Old English, of fundamental importance to the history of the English language in its earliest known form. The present manuscript with ""Library Blickling MS"" in a nineteenth-century hand on the modern paper front endleaf. Sold in the Lothian sale in the Anderson Galleries of New York, 27-28 January 1932, lot 21 (illustrated), to G. Wells. 3. Lucius Wilmerding (1880-1949), New York banker and trustee and president of the Grolier Club (recorded as in his library by S. de Ricci, Census of Medieval and Renaissance Manuscripts in the United States and Canada, II, 1937, p. 1852, no. 4); sold in Wilmerding's second sale in Parke-Bernet Galleries, 5 March 1951, lot 409. 4. Sotheby's, 11 July 1966, lot 236, as 'the property of a lady'. 5. Charles W. Traylen, catalogue for 1966, no. 7, purchased by a Low Countries collector, and by descent since. Text: The volume comprises a Calendar, set out with two columns per page and using gold, blue and red inks; the Gospel readings; the Obsecro te and O intemerata prayers; the Hours of the Virgin, with Matins, Lauds, Prime, Terce, Sext, Nones, Vespers, Compline; the Hours of the Cross; the Hours of the Holy Spirit; the Seven Penitential Psalms, ending with a Litany and prayers; the Office of the Dead; suffrages to the Trinity and SS. Michael, John the Baptist, John the Apostle, Laurence, Sebastian, Nicholas, Anne, Mary Magdalene, Catherine, Margaret and Barbara. Illumination This richly decorated codex belongs to a small group of extra-illustrated Books of Hours produced around 1500 by a group of Parisian artists, perhaps operating in a single workshop together. All have the same cornucopia of whimsical marginal scenes, with identical monkeys, ducks, surprised looking owls, boar and frogs, arranged in a seemingly endless variety of scenes, often copying human behaviour, and in compositions filled with somewhat blotchy trees filled with red fruit. Leaves from a now-dispersed example can be found in Maggs Bros., catalogue 1283, 'Illuminations', nos. 40-42 and Bloomsbury Auctions, London, 6 July 2021, lot 85 among many others. The larger miniatures comprise: (i) five large miniatures (each approximately a third of the page in height): Luke; Matthew; Mark; the Virgin in prayer; the Virgin and Christ Child; (ii) thirteen three-quarter miniatures of John the evangelist, the Annunciation to the Virgin, the meeting at the golden gate, the Nativity, the Annunciation to the Shepherds, the Visitation of the Magi, the Presentation in the Temple, the Flight into Egypt, the Coronation of the Virgin, the Crucifixion, the Pentecost, David gazing at Bathsheba, and Job in his dungheap; (iii) five full page miniatures of God the father, the Tree of Jesse, Christ being placed on the Cross with a workman boring holes in the arms of the Cross as Christ sits on its main body, his hands tied, all before a medieval walled town and onlookers; Christ spearing an open hellmouth with a golden pennant as sinners escape, these naked and kneeling in prayer with one playing a harp, demon faces appearing below them; the death of Uriah in battle, the scene imagined here as a medieval cavalry battle, with armed men on horseback, and the dead strewn on the ground. However, what is of the greatest charm and here is the wealth of marginal miniatures, including birds hunting insects, a monkey hunting ducks with a crossbow, a dog chasing a hare, other dogs chasing stag-headed drolleries, a white peacock displaying to its mate, a monkey pointing at its bottom to insult a boar as it comes to eat acorns beneath an oak tree, two monkeys playing a game comparing their feet, a monkey playing a lute for two drolleries, a man hunting a drollery with a scythe, a bird headed peasant collecting fruit in a basket, a monkey hunting a boar with a bow and arrow, a monkey offering a sack to a man pushing a cart, a dog pouncing on a boar as a monkey blows a hunting horn, monkeys with baskets and ladders collecting fruit from a tree, a monkey working some form of mechanical device in a river (perhaps a pump), a monkey reaching out to pluck the tail of a dog as it seizes a cockerel, a dog hunting a duck in a river as a monkey follows in a boat, a monkey playing a horn to attract birds, a rabbit warren, two foxes running away with a bird, a mon key on a hobby-horse, a monkey riding a boar, two chickens, a monkey driving a quadruped drollery which is carrying sacks, a monkey hooking a duck with a curved stick, a large frog, a bird and its nest, a monkey riding a large dog-faced drollery, and many variations thereof. These are somewhat crudely executed, as with all other products of this workshop, but add great humour to the volume
