Book of Hours (Use of Paris)

From the Office of the Dead, Vespers (includes verses from Psalm 137 and Luke 1).

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Kenyon, OH, Kenyon College, Fifty Original Leaves of Medieval Manuscripts (Set 23), no. 31

General Information

Title Book of Hours (Use of Paris)
Material Parchment
Place of Origin France

Original Condition

Page Height at least 190 mm
Page Width at least 130 mm
Height of Written Area 107 mm
Width of Written Area 68 mm
Number of Columns 1
Number of Lines 15

Current Condition

Dimensions 187 x 129 mm

Book Decoration and Musical Notation

Description

Marginal rinceaux and painted line fillers, smallish acanthusleaves on miniature pages only. Margins also include goldtrefoil and red, blue, and green flowers growing on therinceaux. Rinceaux often seems to “sprout” out of the text,usually from a single gold initial or line-filler. Borders onrecto and verso are mirrored for efficiency. Some leavesshow a gold ring motif among the rinceaux. Miniatures withgold U-borders with flowers/ leaves in red and blue.Continental color palette: Blues, purples, jewel tone &continental design: botanical, leafy, organic. Miniaturecomposition similar to Bedford Master Workshop, DunoisMaster Workshop, and occasionally elements of BoucicautMaster Workshop (as suggested by Sotheby’s). JudithOliver in 1985: “These compositions are very similar in alltheir details to those of the Bedford atelier.”

History

Origin

Written in northern France in the second quarter of thefifteenth century, for the Use of Paris. Use of Paris isindicated by the Calendar and liturgical variants in Matins ofthe Hours of the Virgin, and Vespers and Matins in theOffice of the Dead.

Provenance

Broken by Otto F. Ege before 1950. Many text leaves usedas No. 31 in his "Fifty Original Leaves from MedievalManuscripts" portfolios, forty of which were assembled inthe 1950s. The miniatures were distributed by other means.

Bibliography

  • Gwara, Scott. Otto Ege's Manuscripts
    (Cayce, SC : DeBrailes Publishing, 2013), pp. 128-129.

  • Oliver, Judy. Manuscripts Sacred and Secular (Boston:Endowment for Biblical Research, 1985), pp. 58-59 (no. 97,figs. 20-23).

  • Oliver, Judy. Manuscripts Sacred and Secular (Boston:Endowment for Biblical Research, 1985), pp. 58-59 (no. 97,figs. 20-23).