Book of Hours: MS 1-1974

Titles

Book of Hours

Maker(s)

Artists: Masters of the Beady Eyes

Entities

• Book of hours
• Use of Rome

Categories

• Iluminated manuscript
• Manuscript

Description

PHYSICAL DESCRIPTION: Parchment, vii paper flyleaves + 113 fols. + i paper flyleaf, 188 x 132 (133 x 78 – 83) mm, 17 (fols. 1 – 91) or 19 (fols. 92 – 112) long lines, ruled in violet (fols. 1 – 91) or pink (fols. 92 – 112) ink.

BINDING: late sixteenth-century, brown leather over pasteboards, sewn on 3 supports, gold-tooled centre design of IHS with Crucifixion above and 3 nails below surrounded by Crown of Thorns and rays, salmon pink and blue endbands, edges stained blue, repaired and rebacked

CONTENTS: fols. 1r – 6v Calendar (in Middle Dutch); fols. 7r – 12r Hours of the Cross; fols. 12v – 17v Hours of the Holy Spirit; fols. 18r – 23r Mass of the Virgin
fols. 23r – 27v Gospel Sequences; 28r –31v Obsecro te; fols. 31v – 33v O Intemerata; fols. 34r – 76v Hours of the Virgin; fols. 77r – 91r Penitential Psalms and Litany; fols. 92r – 112v Office of the Dead.

DECORATION: Five large framed miniatures with three-sided gold and pink bar borders, and acanthus, floral and spraywork borders for main text divisions:
fol. 7r Hours of the Cross, Crucifixion, with Mary swooning, St Mary Magdalene, disciples, priests and soldiers; fol. 12v Hours of the Holy Spirit, Pentecost; fol. 18r Mass of the Virgin, Virgin and Child with suppliant angel; fol. 28r Obsecro te, Pietà, with St Mary Magdalene and Joseph of Arimathea; fol. 34r Hours of the Virgin, Matins, Annunciation; fol. 77r Penitential Psalms, Christ in Judgement, displaying Wounds and flanked by trumpeting seraphim, with the dead rising and the Virgin and St John interceding.

ORNAMENTATION: Blue or pink white-patterned initials [4 – 5 ll.] with foliate infill on gold grounds for main text divisions; gold initials [4 ll.] on blue and pink white-patterned grounds with one-sided gold, blue and pink bar-border and spraywork extensions; gold initials [2 ll.] on blue and pink white-patterned grounds; alternate gold and blue one-line initials with black or red pen-flourishing; gold, blue and red geometric linefillers.

Notes

History note: Given by Johannes III de Nollet, Abbot of St Giles, near Liège (1636 – 1656) to his brother Nicholas de Nollet in 1650 (inscription on recto of first flyleaf at front); pressmark ‘Litt. SB’ (recto of first flyleaf at front); inscription: Adolf assier emit. 1724 (inside upper cover); Herbert Charles Marsh (d.1851) (armorial bookplate inside upper cover); cutting from an unidentified Sotheby’s sale, lot 231 inside upper cover; purchased by Professor Phillip Grierson at David’s bookstall, Cambridge, in 1939; his gift, 1974.