This illuminated vellum leaf was painted in France late in the nineteenth century, in the manner of a Paris Book of Hours of about 1400. Somebody spent a very long time on it. The border alone holds hundreds of gold ivy leaves, each laid on separately and finished with a pen-drawn stem. Inside sits the Crucifixion: the Virgin swoons and John holds her up; the Magdalene kneels at the foot of the cross with her hair down and a handkerchief to her face. A knight on a white horse looks up at Christ, and behind them green hills run off to a walled town.
A Book of Hours was a private prayer book. The Parisian manner of about 1400 is easy to recognize once you have seen it: sprays of gold ivy on hairline tendrils, bars of pink and blue acanthus on burnished gold, a miniature under a round arch, a large initial in blue and gold to open the text. Our artist reproduced all of it. The gold on the initial and the bars is leaf, laid down and burnished, and it still catches the light. Even the blank back is ruled in red ink, just like the painted side. One habit of the artist's own century slipped through. The text ends in three trailing dots.
The eight lines under the picture are the Gradual for the Mass of the Seven Sorrows of the Virgin, the feast of Mary's grief at the cross. The feast began at Cologne in 1423 and was extended to the whole Latin Church by Benedict XIII in 1727. The text describes the scene above it. In translation: "Thou art sorrowful and worthy of tears, O Virgin Mary, standing near the cross of the Lord Jesus, thy Son, our Redeemer. O Virgin Mother of God, he whom the whole world doth not contain, the author of life, made man, beareth this punishment of the cross."
Pages like this one came out of the nineteenth-century revival of illumination. France had spent the middle of the century rediscovering its manuscripts. The Comte de Bastard d'Estang's "Peintures et ornements des manuscrits," issued from 1835 to 1869 with a million francs of public money, put 220 hand-painted plates of medieval pages before artists who would never handle a manuscript themselves. By the 1880s ateliers in France and Belgium were producing devotional leaves and whole prayer books in the medieval manner.
The occult revival grew up in the same decades. Éliphas Lévi, a leading writer in the modern revival of magic, drew on the language of Catholic liturgy. The novelist Joséphin Péladan opened his Salon de la Rose+Croix in Paris in 1892 to religion, legend, myth, dream and allegory, and banned modern life from it outright. We would argue that the page belongs beside the books of the occult revival, whose authors also looked to medieval religious imagery.
It is a big, handsome leaf, roughly 32 by 23 cm, painted on one side only. The colors are fresh; the gold on the initial shows minor rubbing.
CRUCIFIXION, WITH THE GRADUAL "DOLOROSA ET LACRIMABILIS ES." Illuminated leaf on vellum, painted in the manner of a fifteenth-century French Book of Hours. France, late nineteenth century.
Physical Description: A single leaf of vellum, approximately 32 x 23 cm, painted on the recto only. Miniature of the Crucifixion in colors and gold, approximately 16.5 x 12 cm, with a round-arched top. Below it a four-line initial D in blue and pink on burnished gold, joined to a bar border of pink and blue acanthus on gold running down both sides and along the foot, and eight lines of Latin in a Gothic hand in black ink, with nine small initials in blue and red and one line-filler in pink, blue, white and gold. The whole surrounded on all four sides by a border of gold ivy leaves, pen tendrils and small flowers in blue, pink and green. Verso blank, ruled in red ink, with a circled pencil number "834" at the foot.
Binding: Unbound leaf, unframed.
Condition: The vellum is cockled and a little wavy across the whole sheet. The outer edge is slightly irregular with one small nick. Light soiling and some faint staining to the verso. The gold on the initial shows minor rubbing. The colors are fresh and the miniature is undamaged.
This illuminated vellum leaf was painted in France late in the nineteenth century, in the manner of a Paris Book of Hours of about 1400. Somebody spent a very long time on it. The border alone holds hundreds of gold ivy leaves, each laid on separately and finished with a pen-drawn stem. Inside sits the Crucifixion: the Virgin swoons and John holds her up; the Magdalene kneels at the foot of the cross with her hair down and a handkerchief to her face. A knight on a white horse looks up at Christ, and behind them green hills run off to a walled town.
A Book of Hours was a private prayer book. The Parisian manner of about 1400 is easy to recognize once you have seen it: sprays of gold ivy on hairline tendrils, bars of pink and blue acanthus on burnished gold, a miniature under a round arch, a large initial in blue and gold to open the text. Our artist reproduced all of it. The gold on the initial and the bars is leaf, laid down and burnished, and it still catches the light. Even the blank back is ruled in red ink, just like the painted side. One habit of the artist's own century slipped through. The text ends in three trailing dots.
The eight lines under the picture are the Gradual for the Mass of the Seven Sorrows of the Virgin, the feast of Mary's grief at the cross. The feast began at Cologne in 1423 and was extended to the whole Latin Church by Benedict XIII in 1727. The text describes the scene above it. In translation: "Thou art sorrowful and worthy of tears, O Virgin Mary, standing near the cross of the Lord Jesus, thy Son, our Redeemer. O Virgin Mother of God, he whom the whole world doth not contain, the author of life, made man, beareth this punishment of the cross."
Pages like this one came out of the nineteenth-century revival of illumination. France had spent the middle of the century rediscovering its manuscripts. The Comte de Bastard d'Estang's "Peintures et ornements des manuscrits," issued from 1835 to 1869 with a million francs of public money, put 220 hand-painted plates of medieval pages before artists who would never handle a manuscript themselves. By the 1880s ateliers in France and Belgium were producing devotional leaves and whole prayer books in the medieval manner.
The occult revival grew up in the same decades. Éliphas Lévi, a leading writer in the modern revival of magic, drew on the language of Catholic liturgy. The novelist Joséphin Péladan opened his Salon de la Rose+Croix in Paris in 1892 to religion, legend, myth, dream and allegory, and banned modern life from it outright. We would argue that the page belongs beside the books of the occult revival, whose authors also looked to medieval religious imagery.
It is a big, handsome leaf, roughly 32 by 23 cm, painted on one side only. The colors are fresh; the gold on the initial shows minor rubbing.
CRUCIFIXION, WITH THE GRADUAL "DOLOROSA ET LACRIMABILIS ES." Illuminated leaf on vellum, painted in the manner of a fifteenth-century French Book of Hours. France, late nineteenth century.
Physical Description: A single leaf of vellum, approximately 32 x 23 cm, painted on the recto only. Miniature of the Crucifixion in colors and gold, approximately 16.5 x 12 cm, with a round-arched top. Below it a four-line initial D in blue and pink on burnished gold, joined to a bar border of pink and blue acanthus on gold running down both sides and along the foot, and eight lines of Latin in a Gothic hand in black ink, with nine small initials in blue and red and one line-filler in pink, blue, white and gold. The whole surrounded on all four sides by a border of gold ivy leaves, pen tendrils and small flowers in blue, pink and green. Verso blank, ruled in red ink, with a circled pencil number "834" at the foot.
Binding: Unbound leaf, unframed.
Condition: The vellum is cockled and a little wavy across the whole sheet. The outer edge is slightly irregular with one small nick. Light soiling and some faint staining to the verso. The gold on the initial shows minor rubbing. The colors are fresh and the miniature is undamaged.
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