A finely illuminated leaf from an early French Book of Hours with a large, beautifully executed historiated initial showing the Nativity.
The style is distinctive: faces are drawn with parallel curved lines to represent the eyebrow, upper eye-socket, and upper eyelid; mouths are downturned; hands are unusually large; blue and orange dominate the palette; and draperies are modelled with remarkable fluidity.
Provenance: Probably produced in Picardy: the calendar of the parent volume (sale at Sotheby’s, 6 December 2001, lot 15), includes as major feasts, in red, St Quentin (31 October), St Ouen (24 August), and three feasts of St Eligius (25 June, 1 September, 1 December), bishop of Noyon and Tournai, all of which suggests an origin at Noyon, Amiens, or another town in that region.
The Cistercian abbey at Arnsburg, Germany, founded in 1174, approximately half-way between Frankfurt and Marburg: inscribed ‘Bibliothec Arnsburg’; at the secularisation in 1802/3 the abbey was given to:
The Counts of Solms-Laubach, at Schloss Laubach (approximately 10 miles / 15 km north-east of Arnsburg): this manuscript was described as being in their library by Vaubel in 1926, but was deaccessioned and broken-up within a few years: leaves were offered by Gilhofer & Ranschburg, Luzern, Catalogue 128 [1929], nos. 270, 271, and 284; and again in their Lager-Katalog XIX [1929/30?], nos. 11–14. One leaf was acquired in 1939 by the Metropolitan Museum, New York (inv. no. 39.81.4). Sold at Sotheby’s, 8 December 1981, lot 23 (full-page ill.).
The Boehlen Collection, Bern, MS 1307.
The leaves and the parent volume are discussed in ‘Leaves from a 14th-Century Picard(?) Book of Hours’, 8 September 2018, at mssprovenance.blogspot.com. The parent volume had a fairly standard series of texts and images except at the end, where it had three different versions of the Virgin and Child.
H.O. Vaubel, Die Miniaturenhandschriften … der Gräfl. Solmsischen Bibliothek zu Laubach (Giessen, 1926), no. V. Gilhofer & Ranschburg, Catalogue 218: A Beautiful Collection of Fine and Rare Books, Autographs, Manuscripts, Miniatures?… (Vienna [1929]), nos. 270, 271, and 284. Gilhofer & Ranschburg, Lager-Katalog XIX: Einzel-Miniaturen des XIII. bis XV. Jahrhunderts von ausgesuchter Qualität … (Luzern [1929/30]), nos. 11–14..
