Original leaf from a manuscript Book of Hours. 15 lines of hand-ruled text written in Latin on animal vellum in brown ink.(184 x 125mm – 7 ¼ x 4 7/8’’)
Twenty-seven one-line illuminated initials and twenty line extender in burnished gold on red and blue ground with delicate white penwork. The panel borders contain a highly decorative floral design with flowers, berries, and acanthus leaves in blue, red, green, pink, and burnished gold.
France (Anjou), Use of Angers, c. 1450-75.
Charming ink drawings (doodle) of a bearded man’s head extending into a banner which hold the “catch words” (the first two words on the next leaf ).
The one-line illuminated “S” continues the Litany of the Saints (first prescribed by Pope Gregory in 590 for a public thanksgiving following a plague that ravaged Rome). Names of saints are listed with each invocation followed by the abbreviation for “ora pro nobis” (Pray for us). Among the saints listed are: Sts. Mary Magdalene (patron of repentant sinners), Agatha (patron of bell founders), Katherine (patron of theologians), and Anne (patron of miners).
The one-line illuminated “A” begins the section of “Abs”(Deliver us from…): “Ab omni malo…” (From all evil, O Lord deliver us. From all sin, O Lord deliver us…).
Angers was the cradle of the Plantagenet dynasty and one of the intellectual centers of Europe during the reign of Rene of Anjou, (1434-80). When this leaf was scribed the two branches of the Plantagenet dynasty, House of Lancaster & House of York, were engaged in the War of the Roses.
Presented in an archival 14 x 11'' mat
