Original leaf from a medieval manuscript Book of Hours. 22 lines of text, ruled in red, written in Latin with dark brown ink & red rubrics in beautiful lettre batarde script on animal vellum. (112 x 83mm – 4 ½ x 3 ¼’’) . A diminuative leaf with elaborate illumination, somewhat cockled but attractive.
Twenty-two illuminated one-line initials in liquid gold on blue or red ground; twenty-one illuminated line extenders in red, blue or sepia with liquid gold. Quarter-page panel border in an intricate floral motif with acanthus leaves, and flowers in temperas and liquid gold.
Northern France, c. 1450-75.
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). “Names of saints are listed with each invocation followed by the abbreviation for “ora pro nobis” (Pray for us).
Among the saints listed are: Saints Martin (patron of soldiers), Nicholas (patron of children), Augustine (patron of theologians), Jerome (patron of librarians), Mary Magdalene, Mary of Egypt, Felicitas, Barbara (patron of architects), and Cecilia (patron of poets and singers).
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.
Presented in an archival 14 x 11'' mat
