Book of Hours (Use of Paris)

Office of the Dead, Vespers - The Song of the Blessed Virgin Mary [Luke 1], Psalm 145

F-th75

Saskatoon, SK, University of Saskatchewan, Fifty Original Leaves of Medieval Manuscripts (Set 25), no. 31

General Information

Title Book of Hours (Use of Paris)
Shelfmarks Fifty Original Leaves of Medieval Manuscripts (Set 25), no. 31
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 190 x 130

Book Decoration and Musical Notation

Description

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

History

Origin

Written in northern France in the second quarter of the
fifteenth century, for the Use of Paris. Use of Paris is
indicated by the Calendar and liturgical variants in Matins of
the Hours of the Virgin, and Vespers and Matins in the
Office of the Dead.

Provenance

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

Bibliography

  • Gwara, Scott. Otto Ege's Manuscripts (Cayce, SC : De
    Brailes 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).