Beschreibung:

CRUCIFIXION WITH THE VIRGIN AND JOHN THE EVANGELIST, miniature on a leaf from a Book of Hours, ILLUMINATED MANUSCRIPT ON VELLUM [Angers, 1455-1460] 157 x 111mm (leaf), 73 x 51mm (miniature). Arch-topped miniature of the Crucifixion with the Virgin and the Evangelist standing beneath the Cross in a barren landscape, a distant and faint Jerusalem beyond rocky outcrops, a full-page border with baguettes of pink, blue and gold springing from a four-line initial surrounded by hairline tendrils with golden leaflets and corner-sprays of orange, blue and gold acanthus; on the verso , a panel border and 17 lines of text in brown ink, rubrics in pink, one-line initials of blue with red flourishing and gold with blue, two two-line initials with grounds of burnished gold and foliate infills, line-endings of gold, pink and blue (fading of pinks, edges of margins darkened where paper pasted on verso). Framed. This affecting and elegant miniature would have originally opened the Office of the Cross, in a Book of Hours now in Paris (BnF, Rothschild 2530): Les Manuscrits à peintures, 1440-1520 eds F. Avril and N. Reynaud, 1993, no 57. The Rothschild manuscript was a collaborative product of three illuminators, perhaps relatives, who were particularly associated with the name of Guillaume Jouvenel des Ursins, chancellor of Charles VII, but whose individual artistic identities have now been clarified. The subtle restrained palette and agitated handling of this Crucifixion are characteristic features of the artist known as the Master of the Geneva Boccaccio: E. König, Französiche Buchmalerei um 1450, Der Jouvenel-Maler, der Maler des Genfer Boccaccio und die Anfänger Jean Fouquets , 1982. In his discussion of Rothschild 2530 König calculated that the opening of the Office of the Cross -- which can now be identified as this leaf -- would have been f.126 in the complete manuscript; König, pp.120-123.