Beschreibung:

JOB ON THE DUNGHEAP, miniature on a leaf from a Book of Hours [Paris, c.1500] A sensitive and empathetic handling of the Old Testament story of Job – tormented by the Devil, before his redemption by God – by the Master of Petrarch’s Triumphs, the illuminator named after a 1503 translated copy of Petrarch’s Trionfi (Paris, Bibliothèque nationale de France, MS. fr. 594), a manuscript likely commissioned in Rouen by its Cardinal and Archbishop, George I d’Amboise (1460-1510), for presentation to Louis XII. 123 x 89mm. The miniature would have introduced the Office of the Dead in a Book of Hours. Laid down on paper, framed. Provenance : Christie's, 8 December 1971, lot 262. A close associate of Jean Pichore (fl. c.1500-1520), with whom the Master collaborated on a number of works illuminated in Paris – including a Book of Hours held at the Musée Renaissance in Écouen (MS. E. Cl. 1251) – despite their shared patron’s residence in Rouen and his work is characterised by the same solid figures clothed in voluminous drapery and watercolour-like, transparent landscapes. The hand of the Master of Petrarch’s Triumphs, for some time tentatively conflated with that of Pichore, has also been discerned in the Hours of Claude Molé (New York, Morgan Library, MS M.356) illuminated c.1500 in Paris, which features closely comparable facial types to those in the present miniature, displaying high, angular cheekbones flushed with definite brushstrokes of red.