Refined Parisian miniature from the flourishing workshop of Maître François, among the leading illuminators of late fifteenth-century France.

150 mm. x 113 mm, single leaf from a Book of Hours, ruled in red ink for a single column of sixteen lines, written in a Gothic book hand, line fillers in pink and blue with white tracery and burnished gold bezants; six initials of one and two lines in burnished gold on grounds of blue and pink with white pen decoration, one initial of three lines in blue, infilled with colorful foliage on burnished gold grounds, ONE HALF PAGE MINIATURE, arch-topped of the Adoration of the Magi framed on three sides by illuminated bar borders with colorful foliage on burnished gold grounds, surrounded by a full border of scrolling acanthus leaves, dense rinceaux, flowers, fruit, gold ivy leaves, and bezants, verso with a similar panel border. Minor losses to the faces of the Christ Child and the kneeling Magus, with slight soiling to the Virgin’s face, otherwise very well preserved, with fresh colors and bright illumination.

This attractive miniature was likely executed within the workshop of the so-called Maître François, who directed one of the most successful Parisian illumination ateliers of the third quarter of the fifteenth century, active especially between about 1460 and 1480. The artist takes his name from his association with a manuscript described as the work of the “pictor Franciscus” in a letter dated 1473 from the humanist Robert Gaguin to Charles de Gaucourt, the manuscript’s recipient. Mathieu Deldicque (2014) has proposed identifying this illuminator and historiator with the documented Parisian artist François Le Barbier the Elder, recorded in archival sources between 1455 and 1472, distinguishing him from François Le Barbier the Younger, active from 1478 until his death in 1501 and identified with the Master of Jacques de Besançon. The workshop of Maître François produced a wide range of luxury manuscripts, both sacred and secular, including Books of Hours, romances, chronicles, and humanist texts for an elite Parisian clientele. Characteristic features of his style include richly saturated palettes, carefully constructed architectural settings, refined ornamental detail, female figures and children with smooth porcelain-like complexions, and male figures with darker, more strongly modeled faces. The illumination of the present leaf belongs closely to this artistic milieu and seems especially related to works associated with the master’s immediate collaborators. A particularly revealing comparison may be made with a Book of Hours now in the Morgan Library (MS M.231), attributed to one of Maître François’s principal associates. The Adoration of the Magi in that manuscript (f. 81) offers a close parallel in figure types, spatial organization, architectural framing, and compositional arrangement, suggesting that both images depend upon models circulating within the same Parisian workshop group. The present leaf opened Sext in the Hours of the Virgin with Deus in adiutorium meum intende…, continuing on the verso.

Provenance
(1) Private Collection, Unitied States.

Parent manuscript and sister leaves
A single sister leaf is presently known: the Flight into Egypt, offered by Pirages (ST19653-193).

LITERATURE
Unpublished; Related literature: John Plummer, The Last Flowering: French Painting in Manuscripts, 1420–1530, New York, 1982, no. 90; François Avril and Nicole Reynaud, Les manuscrits à peintures en France, 1440–1520, Paris, 1993, pp. 45–52; Roger S Wieck, Painted Prayers: The Book of Hours in Medieval and Renaissance Art, New York, 1997, no. 93; Mathieu Deldicque, “L’enluminure à Paris à la fin du XVe siècle: Maître François, le Maître de Jacques de Besançon et Jacques de Besançon identifiés?,” Revue de l’art 183 (2014), pp. 9–18.

We thank Senior Consultant Sandra Hindman and Peter Bovenmyer for their assistance in preparing this sale.