Beschreibung:

Book of Hours, Use of Paris, illuminated in part at least by Jean Pichore in Latin, manuscript on parchment [Northern France (Paris), c. 1500] 211 leaves (plus 3 modern paper and 3 original parchment endleaves at front, and one original endleaf followed by 3 modern paper at end; the first and last parchment leaves former pastedowns), wanting perhaps 6 single leaves (following fols. 12, 69, 93, 102, 110, and 116, probably all with miniatures), with other miniatures once removed and then skilfully reinserted into volume with newer parchment surrounds, as well as a text bifolium after fol. 192), single column of 15 lines of a professional late gothic bookhand, ruled in pale red ink, capitals touched in yellow, rubrics and major feasts in the calendar in pale red, Calendar opening with blue initials heightened with white penwork on burnished gold grounds, one- and 2-line initials throughout in same (the larger enclosing small sprigs of coloured foliage), with line-fillers to match, larger initials in same but enclosing sprays of coloured foliage, three pages with full decorated borders (fols. 13v, 40r & 67v; that on 40r with blue and burgundy grounds supporting gilt-edge foliage alongside panels of three grey scallop shells heightened with liquid gold and white brushstrokes), ten large arch-topped miniatures, each above four lines of text and surrounded by a full border of acanthus leaves and other foliage, these set on plain parchment, liquid gold, or both divided into geometric shapes, skilfully repaired tear to fol. 82, some thumbing and small scratches in places to miniatures with some small flaking to paint in those places, as well as a few small spots and stains, overall in good and presentable condition, 170 by 115mm.; nineteenth-century French citron morocco, gilt tooled with framework of fleur-de-lis and other foliate decoration surrounding a large central monogram (perhaps "WHCT" overlaid), metal bosses at each corner, the spine with two red morocco title-pieces lettered in gilt capitals "Heures / latines" "XV e siècle" between three compartments of gilt fleurs-de-lis, green watered silk doublures, gilt turn-ins, gilt edges to leaves, slight bumps and scuffs at edges Provenance: 1. Almost certainly written and illuminated in Paris in the workshop of Jean Pichore c . 1500, probably for a female patron. The Use of the Offices of the Virgin and of the Dead, identify it as a Parisian production, while the Obsecro te prayer uses feminine forms on fol. 24v. In the hands of the De La Grange family within decades of being produced and probably originally produced for a member of this family. Here numerous family records have been added in sixteenth-century hands to the original opening endleaves, the first leaf of the Calendar, and the last endleaf, recording baptisms, marriages and burials at the "eglise de Notre Dame de Semur" (Semur-en-Auxois, some 40 miles north-west of Dijon) in 1570-1606. These are signed "De la grange" or in the Latin form "Grangianus". 2. Still in ownership in Dijon in 1740, when it was inscribed on a front endleaf with a note that it was already lacking some leaves: "MSS du 15 e siecle. / il manque quelques vignettes. / il appartienne aux lagranges de Seurres en 1740 / au Sureffayre[?] libraire de Dijon en 1740". Seurre is some 25 miles south of Dijon. 3. Bound in the nineteenth-century for a French bibliophile, whose complex monogram appears here just as on Folger Library, STC 12721, copy 3 (The vnion of the two noble and illustrate famelies of Lancastre [and] Yorke ..., 1548), and STC 23956 (Wynkyn de Worde A ful deuot and gostely treatyse of the Imytacion and folowynge the blessed lyfe of our sauyour Cryste , c . 1519). 4. In the English trade by the end of the nineteenth century, with purchase information inscribed on front paper endleaf: "Nov. 1890. from W m George's Sons, Park S t , Bristol, £12-12/-". 5. Henry Hucks Gibbs (1819-1907), 1st Lord Aldenham (from 1896), and governor of t