Heures à l'usage de Rouen

Octavo on vellum skin, 147 leaves; text area 93 x 62 mm.
Texts and headings in Latin and French, single column, 15 lines per page. Gothic script; illuminated capitals.
Brown calf, double gilt fillet framing the covers with large gilt and azure cornerpieces, large central oval medallion depicting the Crucifixion, spine with raised bands decorated with a gilt cherub in each compartment, gilt edges. 16^th-century binding.

197 x 134 mm.

Illuminated manuscript on vellum adorned with thirteen paintings.
Book of Hours for the Use of Rouen.
Rouen, circa 1475.

Illuminated manuscript of very high quality, a masterpiece by the “Master of the Rouen Echevinage”.

Texts:

Ff. 1-12v Calendar in French.
Ff. 13-18v Fragments of the four Gospels;
Ff. 19v-22v Obsecro te.
Ff. 23v-27 O Intemerata; these two prayers to the Virgin are written in the masculine.
F. 29 Hours of the Virgin, for the use of Rouen.
Ff. 46v-50v Suffrages of the saints, Penitential Psalms followed by the litanies, Hours of the Cross, Hours of the Holy Spirit, Office of the Dead, for the use of Rouen.
Ff. 134 to 142 Prayers to the Virgin in French.
F. 144 Adoration of the True Cross.

Each month of the calendar is adorned with 2 miniatures of remarkable delicacy, one depicting the evocative activity of that month and the other a biblical scene.

Paintings illustrating the main texts:

F. 13 The four evangelists, writing.
F. 29 The Annunciation.
F. 40 The Visitation.
F. 53 The Nativity.
F. 58 The Annunciation to the shepherds.
F. 62 The Adoration of the Magi.
F. 65 The Presentation in the Temple. Very beautiful faces of Mary and the attendants. The Flight into Egypt seems to be missing.
F. 70 The Coronation of the Virgin.
F. 75 The Crucifixion.
F.78 Pentecost; The Virgin seated in prayer among the apostles.
F.82 David praying before the angel of divine vengeance.
F.100 Office of the Dead—superb margin adorned with scrollwork, animals, and small flowers.
F.126 The Virgin and Child with the patroness kneeling before her in prayer.

All the paintings are set in wide gold frames with acanthus, flowers and fruit, realistic or fantastical animals, grotesques, and genre scenes.

Most of the folios of the manuscript are adorned with rich borders, hymns to nature with golden scrollwork populated with small flowers and wild fruits.

The colorful paintings of this beautiful Book of Hours, executed with great care, are the work of a well-known Rouen illuminator, the most prominent in the Norman capital in the second half of the 15th century (see J. Plummer, The Last Flowering. French Painting in Manuscripts, 1420-1530, from American Collections, exp. New York, Pierpont Morgan Library, 1982, nos. 87-88).

A quality work by this artist, the Hours for the use of Coutances, was sold for £330,000 in London by Sotheby’s on 6.12.1983, lot 82.

The present Book of Hours shows all the characteristics of the art of the “Master of the Rouen Echevinage.”

Very beautiful Rouen manuscript, extremely well preserved.

The style of the paintings as well as the type of decorated letters make it possible to date the Book of Hours, in comparison to other known Rouen manuscripts, to around 1475.

This manuscript was intended for a woman depicted kneeling near the Virgin in the last of the paintings that adorn the beginning of the Fifteen Joys of the Virgin, entirely in French: “Sweet lady of mercy, mother of pity, fountain of all good, who carried Jesus for nine months in your precious womb and who nursed him with your sweet breasts, Beautiful, Most sweet lady, I thank you…” (ff. 134 to 144).

The manuscript comes from the library of Georges Petit.