Elegant Gothic initial from a dispersed Rhineland Breviary.
 
60 mm × 60 mm, cutting preserving ONE HISTORIATED INITIAL ‘E,’ painted in pale pink and blue with white tracery, enclosing the Adoration of the Magi, painted in rich colors with graceful linear draperies, thick outlines, and delicate facial features, set against a rose ground within the body of the letter, the initial on a rectangular blue ground with fine white scrollwork decoration and outlined in black and red. Reverse blank, with later pencil annotations and traces of former mounting including traces of script and possibly musical notation; minor surface wear and staining, slight pigment losses at edges, otherwise in excellent condition with bright colors preserved.
 
Historiated initial ‘E’ with the Adoration of the Magi, probably opening the first responsory at Matins for the Feast of the Epiphany (“Ecce advenit dominator Dominus”), showing the three Magi presenting gifts to the Christ Child seated on the Virgin’s lap. A sister cutting from the same parent manuscript, also formerly in the McCarthy Collection, is offered in this sale (lot 16). Both cuttings were exhibited together in Hong Kong (Knothe 2015).
 
The precise origin of the parent manuscript remains uncertain, although its style suggests production in the Rhineland or a neighboring region. By the twentieth century, the manuscript had been dismembered and circulated on the art market as a group of at least 141 cuttings. This group was later reduced to a smaller collection of eight initials, which were acquired by Sam Fogg in 1998 and subsequently dispersed.
 
Provenance
(1) Apparently part of a series of 141 or more cuttings, and later part of a series of eight, to judge by the pencil numbers inscribed in pencil in a twentieth(?)-century Continental hand on the reverse: “1” and “134.”
 
(2) Bruce Ferrini, Akron, OH (1949–2010).
 
(3) Sam Fogg, purchased April 1998 as part of a group of eight cuttings mounted together with similar pencil inscriptions on the back, with numbers from 1–8, and 131–141 (lacking 132, 138, and 140).
 
(4) Robert McCarthy, London, MS BM 1207a, paired with a second sister cutting (BM 1207b).
 
Sister leaves
Initial ‘P’ with the Nativity: the Virgin seated and nursing the Christ Child, with the empty manger beside them; probably marking the beginning of the Introit Puer natus est for Christmas Day (McCarthy Collection BM a; l207b, lot 16)
 
LITERATURE
Published: Florian Knothe, Illustrious Illuminations: Christian Manuscripts from the High Gothic to the High Renaissance (1250–1540), Hong Kong, 2015, no. 7b; Peter Kidd, The McCarthy Collection, Vol. II, Spanish, English, Flemish & Central European Miniatures, London, 2019.
 
We are grateful to Peter Kidd for permission to quote from his catalogue for this entry, and we thank Senior Consultant Sandra Hindman and Peter Bovenmyer for their assistance in preparing this sale.
 
The Robert McCarthy Collection.