[ENLUMINATION]. - Lot 6

[ENLUMINATION]. Leaf extracted from a manuscript (Hours or Hours-Psautier?). In Latin, illuminated manuscript on parchment. Belgium, Flanders, Ghent? circa 1310-1325. Dimensions : 102 x 68 mm Leaflet, parchment, Gothic script, brown ink, 10 lines of text, ornate initial painted blue with colored leaves, large ascending and descending bar in pink and blue with extensions in upper and lower margins, colored and burnished gold vine leaves, grotesque with orange head (recto), bearded figure holding head and cane (a sort of Memento mori, one can't help but compare with Hamlet and Yorick's skull!) with extension in the outer margin. Good condition, repair to parchment in lower right-hand corner. Some rubbing in places. Text: Recto: [...] benedicere. Alma virgo... Oratio. Sancta Maria virgo virginum mater et filia regis.../ Verso: (continued from verso) electis dei regnare...Responsorium. Sancta et immaculata virginitas... It seems possible to us to link this folio to an (incomplete) manuscript preserved in Baltimore, Walters Art Museum, MS W. 87, which has almost the same dimensions (102 x 67 mm), an identical layout and very similar decoration (binding by Gruel et Engelmann). If this folio does not come from the Walters Art Museum's messy, loose-bound codex, it is, in any case, surprisingly close in the treatment of the decoration, with grotesques and hybrid creatures: "The manuscript is richly illuminated with drolleries; painted on the borders of each folio, they would have amused the reader with their playful animals, hybrids, and human figures". See : Randall, Lilian M. C. Medieval and Renaissance Manuscripts in the Walters Art Gallery. Vol. 3, Belgium, 1250-1530. Baltimore and London, 1997, pp. 72-74, cat. no. 224 ; Digital Facsimile of Walters, MS W.87 : The Digital Walters - W.87, Incomplete Book of Hours