[ENLUMINURE] - Lot 14

[ENLUMINURE] Leaf from a book of hours, beginning Hours of the Virgin (prime). Nativity. In Latin, brown ink, gouache and burnished gold on parchment. France, Paris, circa 1480-1490. Sheet size: 192x115mm Ink a little pale, some minor rubbing to edges, but overall good condition. Verso: 12 lines of text, bastard script in brown ink, end of text for the Hours of the Virgin (lauds), framed with geometric motifs on a blue or gold background, white and blue acanthus leaves, colored flowers and foliage; initial painted in blue with white highlights on a dark red background. Recto: 3 lines of text, bastard script in brown ink, curved miniature surrounded by illuminated borders decorated with colored acanthus leaves, small gilded discs, floral and fruit motifs on a liquid gold background, zoomorphic hybrids in the margins, ornate initials; verso, three-sided border with compartmentalized background decorated with acanthus leaves and floral motifs. This folio was painted by an artist named "Maître du Romuléon de Cluny" by François Avril, based on scattered fragments of a Romuléon in translation by Jean Miélot, possibly commissioned by René II of Lorraine. The Musée de Cluny holds the only full-page painting of this work known to date, as well as a smaller one (Musée de Cluny, Inv. 804 and 1819). Six other miniatures have been found in the Musée de l'Émail in Limoges (see C. Beaujard, Miniatures et dessins...Exposition Limoges, 1997, p. 43 and ill. 3-8). A few other miniatures are in private collections. Formerly known as "Maître de Morgan 26" (identified by Plummer, see later J. Lauga, Les manuscrits liturgiques dans le diocèse de Langres à la fin du Moyen Age. Les commanditaires et leurs artistes, 2007), the "Maître du Romuléon du Musée de Cluny" illuminated numerous incunabula vellums for King Charles VIII, most of them printed for Antoine Vérard, which indicates that the illuminator practiced until around 1495, when his hand can be found in a Miroir historial by Vincent de Beauvais. Most of this artist's activity can be traced back to Paris. His hand is to be found in a fine book of hours, also for use in Rome (Heures dites Rochereau-Le Goix), preserved at Chaumont, BM, ms 34, whose layout is reminiscent of the present leaves (see Delaunay, 2000, vol. 2, pp. 55-60) and also in several Heures à l'usage de Paris (Paris, BnF, lat. 1423 and lat. 13296). There are also Heures à l'usage de Langres in New York, PML, M. 26 (J. Plummer suggests that the artist was originally from Langres, or at least eastern France). This attachment to eastern France has led Nicole Reynaud to suggest that a manuscript of the Jeu des échecs moralisés (Paris, BnF, fr. 2000), painted by the "Master of the Romuléon of Cluny", is undoubtedly of Langres origin. For more on this artist, see I. Delaunay, Echanges artistiques entre les livres d'heures manuscrits et imprimés produites à Paris vers 1480-1500, PhD thesis Paris IV, Paris, 2000, pp. 55-63, 139-141, 243-247, 272-274). Provenance: Former Bosch Foundation collection.