Original leaf from a medieval manuscript Book of Hours. 15 lines of red ruled text, written in Latin, with dark brown ink in gothic script on animal vellum. (210 x 154 mm - 8.4 x 6.2").
Thirty illuminated one-line initials and twenty-three illuminated line-extenders in burnished gold on blue and red grounds with delicate white tracery.
France (probably Paris), c. 1450.
The one-line illuminated ''S'' continues the Litany of the Saints (first prescribed by Pope Gregory in 590 for a public thanksgiving following a plague that ravaged Rome). The names of saints are listed with each invocation followed by the abbreviation for ''ora pro nobis'' (Pray for us). Among the saints listed are: Sts. Nicholas, Benedict, Jerome, Agatha, Agnes, Katherine, and Barbara.
Books of Hours are personal prayer books of a devout and status-conscious society and are not only works of art, but cultural documents of their time. They reveal a unique combination of sacred and secular imagery - made of the finest materials, by the best craftsmen, for a small audience, which could both appreciate and afford them.
Shipped in archival 14x11'' mat.