Manuscript leaf from a Book of Hours, in Latin, produced in France (Tours or Paris)

Text: From a Book of Hours, in Latin

Script: Humanist

The text shows the hymn “Hail, star of the sea” from Vespers in the Office of the Blessed Virgin Mary, and the start of the Magnificat. It is written in a single column of twenty-one lines of text in a very fine, small, brown upright humanistic hand; rubrics are in red. There are three two-line initials in black on shell gold with red filigree decoration or shell gold on a black ground with grey filigree decoration and seven one-line initials in similar colours on the reverse (and often with red ornamentation), one paragraph marker and thirty-one line fillers in various combinations of shell gold, black and red, featuring knotted rope and pruned branch motifs. The text is within a knotted ropework border in shell gold and red with convoluted tassels at the bottom. From the same manuscript as MS 5650/57.

This leaf was produced by the celebrated atelier known as the 1520’s Hours Workshop. Given its name by Myra Orth as a reflection of the studio's principal type of output and period of operation (though work continued into the 1530s), the 1520’s Hours Workshop created, in Wieck's words, “illuminations of the most refined delicacy” (‘Painted Prayers,’ p. 73). In Lilian M. C. Randall's catalogue of French manuscripts in the Walters Art Gallery, a book from the 1520’s Hours Workshop (Walters MS 449) is described as “a fine example of the superb level of craftsmanship attained in French manuscript production during the last quarter century of its full-fledged existence.” (II, 532) Kay Sutton, describing a manuscript from the workshop (sold as Lot No.23 at Christie's on 29 November 2000), says that the atelier's manuscripts “are among the highest achievements of French Renaissance painting.” And Christopher de Hamel, in discussing what is probably the studio's chef d'oeuvre (sold at Sotheby's as Lot No.39 on 21 April 1998), says that the painting done by the 1520’s artists manifested the “utmost professionalism. It was executed with a microscopic detail and virtuosity of technique probably without parallel even in the long tradition of illumination.” Orth in her seminal dissertation on the workshop identifies four closely related painters as being responsible for the devotional manuscripts known to have been produced by the atelier, almost all of them tiny Books of Hours of jewel-like quality done for wealthy patrons. The four artists are all eponymous: the Master of the Rosenwald Hours, the Master of Jean de Mauléon, the Master of the Getty Epistles, and the Doheny Master, who is responsible for the miniatures in the manuscript from which the leaf comes, and who, says de Hamel, “may have been the master of the whole enterprise.” Although unmistakably French, the workshop's production represented a synthesis of great moment. “The 1520’s Books of Hours are the ultimate statements of the reception of Italianate and classical culture into the French court and into books as inherently gothic and northern as Books of Hours, and they illustrate graphically the rediscoveries of antiquity and the natural world which define the Renaissance.” (de Hamel) The workshop has traditionally been located in Tours (which had the status at the time of being France's second capital city), but recent scholarship, particularly by Orth, suggests that its home may have been in Paris. Four leaves from our Doheny Master manuscript were first described (as being from a lost Book of Hours) by Orth in “An Exhibition of European Drawings and Manuscripts, 1480-1880,” and then cited by her in “The J. Paul Getty Museum Journal,” Volume 16, both published in 1988. Shortly afterward, the manuscript, described as an imperfect Hours, appeared as Item No.39 in Sam Fogg's Catalogue 14.

The borders in our leaf are similar to those in the Hours in Cambridge (Fitzwilliam Museum MS 134) and in the Hours of Anne of Austria (Paris, Bib. Nat., MS nour. acq. lat. 3090). The restrained palette of the leaf together with the device of the knotted rope surrounding the text suggests that the patron was a member of the Cordelières, the order of Franciscan Tertiaries to which the women of the French royal family belonged.

The Horae Beatae Mariae ad usum Romanum in the Library of Congress in Washington also comes from the 1520’s Hours Workshop.

Recto side:

1 sancta dei genitrix . Capitulu(m) .

2 A B initio (et) ante secula [line filler]

3 creata sum , (et) usq(ue) ad [line filler]

4 futurum seculum non desinam ,

5 et in habitatione sancta cora(m) ipso

6 ministravi . R(esponsorium) . Deo gratias . hy(mnuus)

7 A Ve maris stella , [line filler]

8 dei mater alma, [line filler]

9 atq(ue) semper virgo [line filler]

10 felix celi porta . [line filler]

11 S umens illud ave , [line filler]

12 gabrielis ore , [line filler]

13 funda nos in pace , [line filler]

14 mutans nomen eve , [line filler]

15 S olve vincla reis , [line filler]

16 profer lumen cecis , [line filler]

17 mala nostra pelle , [line filler]

18 bona cuncta posce . [line filler]

19 M onstra te esse matrem , [line filler]

20 sumat per te preces , [line filler]

21 qui pro nobis natus , [line filler]

Translation of recto:

. . . holy Mother of God.

Chapter [Ecclesiasticus 24]: From the beginning, and before worlds was I created, and unto the world to come I shall not cease: and in the holy habitation have I ministered before him.

Response: Thanks be to God.

Hymn:

All hail, star of the sea,

God’s mother clear and bright,

The happy gate of bliss,

And still in virgin’s plight.

Receiving that all hail,

Which Gabriel’s mouth did give,

Establish us in peace,

Changing the name of Eve.

The guilty’s bands unbind,

Blind men their sight assure:

Ill things from us expel,

All good for us procure.

A mother show thyself,

He take our plaints by thee,

That being for us born,

Verso side:

1 tulit esse tuus . [line filler]

2 V irgo singularis [line filler]

3 inter omnes mittis , [line filler]

4 nos culpis solutos , [line filler]

5 mites fac (et) castos [line filler]

6 V itam presta puram , [line filler]

7 iter para tutum , [line filler]

8 ut videntes Iesum , [line filler]

9 semper colletemur [line filler]

10 S it laus deo patri , [line filler]

11 summo christo decus , [line filler]

12 spiritui sancto , [line filler]

13 trinus honor unus . Amen [line filler]

14 V(ersus) . Diffusa est gratia in labiis [line filler]

15 tuis . R(esponsorium) Propterea benedixit te

16 deus in eternum . A(ntiphona) . Beata mater

17

Canticum beate Marie . [line filler] [paragraph marker

18 M Agnificat anima mea [line filler

19 dominum . [line filler]

20 E t exultavit spiritus meus :

21 in deo salutari meo . [line filler]

Translation of verso:

Vouchsafe thy son to be.

O rarest virgin pure,

Of all that meekest waste,

Discharged of our sin,

Make thou us meek, and chaste.

Grant that our life be pure,

Make safe for us the way,

That while we Jesus see,

Our joy may last for ever.

To God the Father praise,

To Christ high worship be,

And to the Holy Ghost,

One honor unto three. Amen.

Versicle: Grace is poured out in thy lips.

Response: Therefore God hath blessed thee forever.

The Song of the Most Blessed Virgin Mary [Luke 1]:

My soul: doth magnify our Lord.

And my spirit hath rejoiced: in God my saviour.

Notes:

A Letters: a,b,c,d,e,f,g,h,i,l,m,n,o,p,q,r,s,t,u/v,x,y,A,B,C,D,I,M,P,R,V.

Versals: A,E,M,S,V.

B Alternative forms of ‘s’(2), ‘u’(2) and ‘v’(2).

C Ligature between letters ‘ct’, e.g. in ‘sancta’ (recto, line 1).

D Ligature between letters ‘st’, e.g. in ‘stella’ (recto, line 7).

E Ligature between letters ‘ss’, e.g. in ‘esse’ (recto, line 19).

F Use of ampersand form of ‘et’ (e.g. recto, line 2).

G Use of a brief line filler of a crossed letter ‘i’ (eg recto, line 2).

H Abbreviation of ‘usque’ (recto, line 3).

I Abbreviation of ‘atque’ (recto, line 9).

MS 5650/57