c 1420 Book of Hours Leaf - Flagellation - Important Workshop

$12,000.00

Original leaf from a medieval manuscript Book of Hours. Red-ruled text written in French with dark brown ink in gothic script on animal vellum. (161 x 124mm – 6 3/8 x 4 7/8) 

Reference:  Sister leaves pictured and described in the Cleveland Museum Blackburn Collection – Catalog #s 29-38.

Metz, France, c. 1420-30, Workshop of Henri d’Orquevaulx.

Surrounding the miniature & text is an intricate floral border in tempera, silver & burnished gold with a duck walking across a grassy berm at the bottom.

The exceptional miniature painting depicts The Flagellation: The viewer watches through an archway as Christ, wearing a crown of thorns, stands behind a green column with wrists crossed in front and tied by rope to the column, His lower legs are also secured to the column by rope. Christ’s body is bleeding from the flails administered by the two men on either side of him.   Three men are seen in the background in front of a heavily burnished gold wall.

The illuminations from this Book of Hours “appear to derive from the Workshop of Henri d’Orquevaulx, a documented Metz manuscript painter…Compositionally, structurally, and stylistically, the miniatures suggest strong links to Netherlandish illumination…” (Blackburn).

Provenance:  Jehan de Poncy & wife Marguerite, c. 1539; Bartlett Gurney of Norwich (d. 1803) – his aunt Catherine Gurney, who gave it to Rev. Edward Edwards of Lynn in 1808; Given to Wm Gurney, nephew of C. Gurney; individual leaves appeared with Edward R. Lubin, New York, 1980's.

Presented in an archival 14 x 11'' mat

  • Inventory# IM-12152