Utopia, armarium codicum bibliophilorum, Cod. 103
Leuchtendes Mittelalter, Neue Folge III, Vom Heiligen Ludwig zum Sonnenkönig: 34 Werke der Französischen Buchmalerei aus Gotik, Renaissance und Barock, beschrieben von Eberhard König mit Beiträgen von Gabriele Bartz und Heribert Tenschert, Ramsen Antiquariat Heribert Tenschert 2000, S. 472.
Manuscript title: Book of Hours, Horae B.M.V., for the use of Rome, with a calendar for Langres.
Place of origin: Dijon
Date of origin: 1524
Catalogue number:
28
Support: Vellum
Extent:
179 leaves of vellum
Format: Octavo (145x 85 mm)
Page layout:
Text 98 x 47 mm
Writing and hands: Bastarda
Decoration: 145 pictures: 26 large miniatures in Renaissance architecture, with numerous grotesques, twelve of them above 6 lines of text, three above 7 lines, ten above 8 lines and one above 12 lines of the text, that displays initials varying between 1- and 3-lines; 12 calendar pages with comparable frames and illustrations of the months in the bas-de-page and medallions with signs of the zodiac, 43 marginal pictures with landscape, golden or ornamental ground, 52 pictorial motifs, some corresponding to the text, some grotesque and some imitating motifs from Classical antiquity. All text pages, including those without text, with three golden bars and one large border with most different figural and ornamental painting. Psalm incipits and comparable texts with 2-line acanthus initials on decorated golden ground; psalm verses with 1-line blue or gold acanthus letters on red or blue; Capitals with yellow wash.
Binding:
Brown calfbinding of around 1580 with rich semé gilding.
Main language: Latin
Contents:
Book of Hours, Horae B.M.V., for the use of Rome, with a calendar for Langres.
Latin manuscript in black and red, gold and blue on vellum, in bastarda.
Latin manuscript in black and red, gold and blue on vellum, in bastarda.
Origin of the manuscript:
- Dijon, dated 1524: Master of Bénigne Serre, a hitherto unknown painter from the circle of the 1520 Hours Workshop.
- A Book of Hours, preserved complete and in splendid condition from the late years of French illumination, dated 1524 and destined for a major royal functionary in Burgundy, in a most beautiful Parisian binding of the 16th century. It contains a display of pictures difficult to find in other manuscript Books of Hours. Discovered in 1905, the book disappeared and was recently rediscovered!