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YOU ARE BIDDING ON A 500+ YEAR OLD 4 PAGE/ 2 LEAF FRAGMENT OF GORGEOUSLY HAND PAINTED AND ILLUMINATED TEXT FROM THE BOOK OF HOURS ORIGINATING IN FRANCE,
CIRCA 1503
This is a page from the famed Book of Hours, namely the Hours of the Virgin, from roughly 1503 in Paris, with 31 gorgeously illuminated medieval handwritten GOLD-RED-BLUE illuminated initials throughout (29 in Liquid GOLD), also with beautiful and singular Gothic-Handwriting; complexly arranged and created with the utmost in precision. If you look closely, you can see the liquid gold shine in the illuminated letters, a perfect reflection of the care and time taken to make this page. An added bonus are the intimately detailed woodcut borders of various Biblical scenes and figures, including three inset miniatures, one of Jesus!
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History of the Art Creation and Color of these pages:
Gold foil ornaments could afford to
larger extent only princes, bishops and rich monasteries. One painted
with thin brushes and water or opaque colors, drawn with india ink and
goose keel. Red color was often formed by red ochers, Zinnober, Menninge, carmine,
Vermiculum, Folium, kite blood (bird), Krapp found and later Brasilholz
was used. The precious magenta served in the antiquity and in the early
Middle Ages contributed to dyeing some particularly magnificent
Pergamentmanuskripte, which were then inscribed with gold or silver ink.
For yellow colours stood yellow ochers, Auripigment, lead-yellow,
Safran and Wau for order, for green colours green earth, malachite-green
and for verdigris as well as Ultramarin, Azurit and Indigo as blue
color means. For black tones lead and bone white, as well as
soot were used. As bonding agents in the Middle Ages fish glue,
Egg or rubber were used.
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Hourly
books were usually provided with book decoration. Individual copies
belong to the finest examples (such as this) ever manufactured containing illustrated
handwriting.
The page is made of Virgin vellum, reserved for the highest of classes, usually made from the skin of unborn animals, such as sheep, calves, and goats. The
vellum is jam packed with detailed woodcut borders and figures as well. The lettering is brought forth with colored
Minuskeln and Lombarden font highlighted in gold,red and blue, and artistic hand drawn ornaments throughout. 26 lines, single column in Romanesque Latin text. Each leaf 6-1/8 INCHES TALL BY 4 INCHES
WIDE; bifolium, as shown. Text in Old Latin influenced French. A few initials smeared, a few light stains, some marginal staining, some smears, but overall- GREAT!
Over 500 years Old, this is a truly rare and worthy of a museum!
EXTREMELY RARE !!!
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The Book of Hours, Its History:
The
hourly book (Book of Hours, also Horarium; (spätlat. horarium = clock), livre d'
heures [livr ˈdœr], that; (frz.= hourly book)) were the
structurary guide modeled after
the Brevier of the Roman-catholic church, very similar a prayer and a
devotion book for the hourly prayer. Certainly they were first for
laymen, also for clerics. The hourly books that came into 13th Century
& up displaced the Psalter from its controlling role as Gebetbuch.
In the
late Middle Ages they were in circles of only the rich,
read-well-informed
aristocracy and city aristocracy, making this the private devotion book
par
excellence. Principal items of the hourly books formed a marianisches
Offizium and the Totenoffizium. The designation hourly book leads itself
off of therein the contained, to certain hours at praying day times.
Originally
beginning around midnight with the Matutin, which was summarized in the
morning for practical reasons in the course of the years with the
Laudes at three o'clock, one prayed in the morning in the three-hour
rhythm starting from six o'clock prime, third, the Sext, the Non
(Liturgie) the Vesper (Liturgie) and the Komplet. In hourly books were
also Cisiojanus Merkverse, which helped during the dating of the mobile
celebrations of the church yearly.
From Abebooks.com:
Books of Hours are arguably the most beautiful of all books. They are
also some of the most expensive, with modest examples starting in five
figures. One of the finest Book of Hours-the richly illuminated Rothschild Prayerbook-sold for a record $13.5 million (£8.6 million) in 1999.
Books of Hours are private devotional books that
were enormously popular with wealthy Catholics in the fifteenth century.
They were typically structured around the hourly prayers observed in
monasteries, and devout Catholics were expected stop eight times a day
and recite the appropriate liturgy.
Despite their strongly religious origin, the
books served more as status symbols and fashion accessories than paths
to heaven, a fact testified to in the large number of copies that
survive in exceptional condition. Most Books of Hours are illuminated
manuscripts, beautifully written out by hand on vellum, with ornate
initial letters in each section, decorative page borders, and-in the
better examples-delicate paintings, which are called miniatures.
According to the Oxford English Dictionary, the
word miniature comes from the Italian term for medieval book
illustration. Since these illustrations were small, the English word
came to refer to diminutive size. Another common English phrase related
to Books of Hours is red-letter day. Books of Hours often included a calendar of holy days, and scribes typically indicated the most important days with red ink.
Tens of thousands of Books of Hours survive,
making them by far the most common books of the Middle Ages. Today, as
six hundred years ago, these manuscripts are sought for their beautiful
illustrations and decoration, not their content, which is archaic and
typically written in Latin. The price of a manuscript depends entirely
on the number and quality of the miniatures.
The miniatures usually depict scenes from the
Bible and the lives of the saints. The settings, however, are not
historical. Instead, the painters placed the figures in contemporary
settings showing, for example, medieval castle towers in the background
of a painting of the Crucifixion. Often it is possible to find a
portrait of the original owner of a Book of Hours in one of the
paintings.
While complete Books of Hours can be expensive,
individual leaves written out and decorated by a scribe six centuries
ago, can be found for little more than the price of a new hardcover book
about illuminated manuscripts. ---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
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