Western Manuscripts and Miniatures

An elegant leaf with enchanting roundels by the circle of the Coëtivy Master, one of the great painters of the French court.

196 x 145 mm. Single leaf, ruled in red for one column of 13 lines (written space: 84 x 63 mm), written in dark brown ink in a late gothic bookhand, rubrics in gold, one-line initials in red or blue on gold ground, line-fillers in same, one TWO-LINE HISTORIATED INITIAL of a cleric, text block enclosed by three-sided red and gold bars, full floral borders of vine stems and acanthus sprouts, strawberries, and flowers, including TWO HISTORIATED MEDALLIONS framed with gold in the outer margin, depicting scenes of the Life of St. Catherine, with figures identified by white hairline inscriptions (slight stain in the upper left corner of the recto, else in very good condition).
 
This leaf comes from a richly illuminated manuscript that included lavish and animated floral borders with historiated roundels on every text pages. Considering that the latter recount the rare lives of St. Catherine of Alexandria and St. Alexis, the manuscript was probably made for a couple of patrons bearing those names. This leaf contains the beginning of the Kyrie introduced with an historiated initial of a cleric, which opens the Litany section. The two roundels depict unidentified scenes of St. Catherine’s life involving a man named Porphyrius, the commander of the emperor’s army whom Catherine had converted and taken as her lover. As first suggested in the sale of a leaf at Sotheby’s, London (6 July 2000, lot 27), this Book of Hours was illuminated in Paris in the 1460s. The layout of the border, the delicate drawing of the square-shaped faces, and the subtle rendering of the landscapes are reminiscent of manuscripts illuminated in the circle of the Master of Coëtivy, arguably the third most important illuminator active in mid-fifteenth century France.

Provenance
Private collection, California, USA, MS 246.

Parent manuscript
The parent manuscript belonged to Erza Clark Stillman (1907-1995), a linguist and university professor who partnered with book dealer Lathrop C. Harper in New York. It would have been dismantled in the early 1980s, considering that many dispersed calendar and text leaves began to resurface in the mid-1980s.

Sister leaves
Sister leaves include one sold by Quaritch (Medieval Manuscript Leaves, London, 1984, no 28), two by the Schuster Gallery (Illuminated Manuscripts, 1987, no 36-37), two by Bruce P. Ferrini (Catalog One, 1987, no. 83-84), four by Maggs Bros (Catalogue 1222, 1996, no 5; Bulletin 21, 1997, no 47; Catalogue 1262, 1998, no 25; Catalogue 1319, 2001, no 18), four by Charles Edwin Puckett (IM-1474, 4091, 4094, 4095), one at Sotheby’s (London, 6 July 2000, lot 17), one by Phillip J. Pirages (Catalogue 74, no 37), one at Bloomsbury (6 July 2021, lot 125 [1]), one at Christie’s, London (9 December 2020, lot 13). Many sister leaves are in public collections, including one at the Boston Public Library (MS pb Med. 232; see Netzer 2006, no 67); two at the Cleveland Museum of Art (2005.2006a ; see Fliegel 1991, no 49; one at Emory University, James Parmelee Fund, 2022.102, acquired from Dreweatts, London, 6 July 2022, lot 81); one at the Missouri University (Museum of Art and Archaeology, Acc. 2003.2 ; K. Hansen, “A Fifteenth-Century French Illuminated Calendar Leaf,” Muse 39-41 (2005-2007), pp. 45-61); and one at the Utah Museum of Fine Arts (Acc. 1996.015.003).

LITERATURE
On the parent manuscript and sister leaves, see Stephen N. Fliegel, The Jeanne Miles Blackburn Collection of Medieval Manuscripts, 1991, no 49; Nancy Netzer, ed., Secular/Sacred, 11th-16th Century. Works from the Boston Public Library and the Museum of Fine Arts Houston, Boston, 2006, no. 67.

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