Book of Hours use of Roma.

1^a (within borders) device These present hours for the use of Rome were finished on the 20th day of August, 1486, for Simon your bookseller residing in Paris on Rue Neuve Notre Dame at the sign of Saint John the Evangelist. 1^b [cut, bleedingman] When the moon is in Cancer.

92^a. The Seven Prayers of Saint Gregory. 92^b, end: . . . be merciful to me, most wretched sinner. Our Father. Hail Mary. Fourth. a⁸; b—k⁸ l ⁴; A⁸. 92 leaves. 12^a: 27 lines, 133 X 77 mm., with borders 169 X 110 mm.

Types: I30 G., heading on 2^a; 98 B., text; 65 G., text of almanac on 2^a. Capital spaces, also within the line. Cuts. Borders. Hain 8851.

Brown Jansenist morocco, raised bands, double gilt fillet on the edges, gilt inner roll, gilt edges. Binding signed by Chambolle-Duru, around 1870.

191 x 131 mm.

Vostre, Simon (14.. – 1521). Horae. Hours according to the Roman use.
August 20, 1496.

“These Hours are adorned with eighteen large illustrations and several small ones. One engraving and certain primitive borders by Pigouchet reappear here. The borders depict the usual subjects, but with the particularity that the Dance of Death consists of only 72 scenes. At the end there are 8 leaves of the Seven Psalms translated from Latin” (Didot, Catal. rais., no. 769).

“Bibliographers have not been able to agree on the true date of the earliest illustrated Book of Hours produced by the printing press, but it is generally acknowledged that the printer Philippe Pigouchet and the bookseller Simon Vostre were the first in Paris to successfully unite engraving with typography. It is to be believed these two booksellers had already practiced wood engraving themselves, and that they managed to enlist carvers skilled enough to bring their woodcuts to the high degree of perfection they attained. Thus, the main credit for the printmaking of these remarkable Hours—so notable for the quality of the ink and especially the variety of the borders—must go to anonymous artists of the late fifteenth century. Here, the most pleasant arabesques, the most singular grotesque subjects, are alternately followed by hunts, games, scenes from the Holy Scriptures, or even from secular history and mythology, and finally the Dances of Death, imitated from the Dance Macabre of men and women, which was then very much in vogue—small compositions still admired for their lively expression.
The Hours of Simon Vostre were well received, as shown by the fact that other booksellers tried to imitate them, succeeding with varying degrees of success. At this period, similar productions appeared from Anthoine Verard—already so famous for his large volumes of chronicles, chivalric romances, etc.—and from others we will have the opportunity to mention below. Thus, the production of Books of Hours became a thoroughly Parisian industry, or at any rate, nowhere else was it practiced so successfully as in Paris; thus, for this item, all of France, part of the Low Countries, and even England, remained for quite a while dependent on the presses of our capital city.”

“Nevertheless, such remarkable productions for their xylographic ornamentation, and in which the mark of the era is so well preserved in the naïve poetry that accompanies them, were almost entirely neglected during the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries; by then they had become completely useless from a liturgical point of view, and too widespread to be counted among rare and precious books. Only the copies richly decorated with paintings found a place in collectors’ cabinets, and even then, only as curiosities of the second order. It took nothing less than the revolution that has taken place since 1820 in literature and the arts to bring the public back to the Gothic style, and to give real importance to the books we are considering here. More sought-after, examined with greater care and, above all, better appreciated, these unique productions have become a subject of admiration for artists and the most skilled connoisseurs.”

Of the seventeen large cuts in this edition, three only (the wound in Christ's side on 2^b, the Trinity on 64^b, and the mass of St Gregory on 77^a, together with the bleeding-man on 1^b, are from the same blocks as in previous editions.
The remainder, carefully executed (presumably on metal), are larger (about 125 mm high) and include no labels for type-set text. Three (the flight into Egypt on 36^a, the death of the Virgin on 38^b, and David and Bathsheba on 36^b) are new subjects, displacing the slaughter of the innocents, David and the angel, the trois vifs and the trois morts of earlier books. Except in the calendar, the borders are also new; they comprise series from the life of the Virgin and of Christ the dance of death (with black criblé ground), and, for the upper corners, the sibyls with Rebecca and Judith, and they have no type-set text.
The almanac comprises the years 1488-1508.

The letter R is printed as a catch-title with the signatures, as in previous editions.

Chancery quarto (191 x 129 mm). 92 leaves. Pigouchet’s woodcut device (Renouard 919), woodcut of Anatomical man, woodcut of the Holy Grail in the form of Christ’s wound, 14 nearly full-page metalcuts (Fairfax Murray set 2) and 32 small cuts, metalcut historiated and ornamental borders on every page, criblé grounds, including Pigouchet’s Dance of Death series (Claudin II 53-53), with 30 male subjects repeated once, and 9 female subjects, 3 line initials in interlocking red and blue, 1-2 line initials and paragraph marks alternating red and blue, later liquid gold on first page and as infill of major initial letters, part of Pigouchet device highlighted in blue.

Superb copy with the title leaf entirely heightened in gold.