Western Manuscripts and Miniatures

A leaf from the well-known St. Albans Bible, enlivened with elaborate penwork flourishing due to Mahiet, a documented collaborator of Jean Pucelle.
 
295 x 195 mm. Single leaf, ruled in brown ink for two columns of 46 lines (written space: 188 x 123 mm), written in a formal gothic textura in brown ink, running titles and chapter numbers (with mistakes for chapters 16 and 17, instead of 17 and 18) alternately in gold and blue on blue and red penwork flourishing, FOUR TWO-LINES INITIALS in blue on gold ground, in-filled with red and blue leaves, with white penwork, accompanied with a nearly full-height bar border in gold, blue or red white penwork, extending into the margins (cockling on the upper left corner, damp staining in the lower margin of the verso, browning on the edges, sewing holes visible, else in good condition).

This leaf comes from the well-known so-called St. Albans Bible, illuminated in Paris in the 1320s to 1340s, with the text including Isaiah 16:13 to 21:2. Characteristic features include the elaborate penwork flourishing of the running title and chapter numbers, and the shape of the elongated bar borders. The illumination of the Bible has been attributed to Mahiet, as confirmed by François Avril. Mahiet had formerly been named the Master of the Life of St. Louis after two manuscripts of the text (Paris, BnF, MS fr. 5716, and fr. 13568; see Kuroiwa 2013). One of the most important illuminators of the second quarter of the fourteenth century, he is recorded as a collaborator of Jean Pucelle in the Belleville Breviary (Paris, BnF, MS lat. 10483-10484). In 1981, François Avril had already suggested that he could be Mathieu Le Vavasseur, a cleric of the diocese of Bayeux who is recorded as a libraire in Paris in 1342 and died before 1352.

Provenance
(1) Purchased from Philip C. Duschnes in 1972.

(2) Private collection, California, USA, MS 276.

Parent manuscript
1. The St. Albans Bible originally comprised 526 leaves bound in a sixteenth-century vellum binding, which included front flyleaves from a Register of John Whethamstede, Abbot of St. Albans. In 1981, Christopher de Hamel suggested that it could be one of the two Bibles recorded as acquired for St. Albans by Abbot Michael of Mentmore (1335-1349), maybe from Richard de Bury, bishop of Durham, who had visited Paris in the 1320s-1330s and bought books there.
2. Sotheby’s, 6 July 1964, lot 239, auctioned as “The Property of a Lady,” already incomplete, since damaged single leaves were already selling in the 1910s and 1920s; acquired by:
3. “Moreland,” and broken up shortly after: single leaves were already offered by Philip C. Duschnes in 1965 (Catalogue 169).

Sister leaves
A list of thirty sister leaves illuminated with historiated initials has been compiled by Peter Kidd. The present leaf is best compared to text leaves illuminated with two-lines initials, numerous examples of which are known in both public and private collections. Examples in public collections include Cambridge, Mass. (Harvard University, Houghton Library, MS Lat 471), Dallas, Texas (Southern Methodist University, Bridwell Library, MS 64), New Haven, Ct. (Yale University, Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library, Takayima MS 87), London (Victoria & Albert’s, CIRC.721-1924, CIRC.207-1923), St. John’s, Newfoundland and Labrador (Queen Elizabeth II Library, BS1274.L3 1325), Toronto (University of Toronto Libraries, Gurney Pam 4), Tokyo (National Museum of Western Art), and Vancouver (University of British Columbia Library, Z114 M424).

LITERATURE
On the parent manuscript and sister leaves: Christopher de Hamel, “Leaf of a Bible Manuscript: France, circa 1330”, in Fine Books and Book Collecting. Books and Manuscripts Acquired from Alan G. Thomas…, 1981, pp. 10-12; Peter Kidd, The McCarthy Collection, Vol. III, French Miniatures, 2021, pp. 305-308, no 85. Further literature on Mahiet, see: François Avril in Les Fastes du gothique. Le siècle de Charles V, Paris, 1981; M Kuroiwa, “Working with Jean Pucelle and His Successors: The Case of the Saint Louis Master [Mahiet?]”, in Jean Pucelle: Innovation and Collaboration in Manuscript Painting, 2013, pp. 111-130.

Freeman’s | Hindman thank Senior Consultant Sandra Hindman and Elliott Adam for their assistance in preparing this sale.