Beschreibung:

ANNUNCIATION and VISITATION, two miniatures on part leaves from a Book of Hours, in Latin, an ILLUMINATED MANUSCRIPT ON VELLUM [Paris ca. 1420] ANNUNCIATION: cutting 147 x 95mm, miniature 107 x 78mm. On the left of a barrel-vaulted room the Virgin kneels at a prie-dieu and looks over her shoulder towards Gabriel who enters from the left, a scroll with his greeting hangs between them, the back wall of the room is checkered pink, blue and burnished gold. The dove of the Holy Spirit descends towards the Virgin on golden rays that come from the mouth of God the Father in the starry sky above the roof. To either side of the miniature is a burnished gold baguette with a foliate pattern of dark pink and blue, in the borders are hairline tendrils with golden disks and leaf-shapes and acanthus terminals spring from the baguettes. The four lines of text below the miniature open with an initial with staves of blue with white decoration against a ground of pink and an infill of burnished gold containing a red and blue dragon. This is the beginning of matins in the Office of the Virgin. VISITATION: cutting 148 x 94mm, miniature 110 x 80mm. In a green landscape with steep outcrops and two small trees St Elizabeth embraces the Virgin, rays from the sun stream down towards them. Borders and an initial of the same type, but with ivy-leaf rinceaux in the infill, decorate this cutting where the text opens lauds for the Office of the Virgin. ILLUMINATION These miniatures were illuminated by a follower of the Boucicaut Master. The compositions draw on his designs and seem to be by the same painter as some miniatures in a Book of Hours in a private collection in New York. Meiss attributed them to "Boucicaut follower" and dated that Hours to ca. 1415: M. Meiss, French Painting in the Time of Jean de Berry: the Boucicaut Master , London, 1968, figs 113, 304 & 305. (2)