Beschreibung:

Details
Master of Marguerite de Willerval (first half 15th century)
The Rahier-Beudin Hours, use of Le Mans, with the Office of the Dead use of Rennes, in Latin, illuminated manuscript on vellum [Rennes or Angers, c.1440]
An appealing Book of Hours illuminated by the Master of Marguerite de Willerval with untrimmed leaves preserved within a contemporary binding.
202 x 145mm. i + 113 leaves + i (foliated 114), modern pencilled foliation: 1-26,36(of 8, lacking i-ii), 4-58, 67(of 8, lacking vi), 75(of 6, lacking ii), 88, 96(of 8, lacking vii-viii), 10-158, 163(?of 6, lacking iv-vi), 172(uncertain, bifolium, at least one bifolium lacking after i), fourteen lines, ruled space: c.90 x 66mm (ff.13-68 gatherings 3-10) and c.94 x 66mm (ff.69-113), rubrics in red, one- and two-line initials and line-endings in burnished gold on grounds of blue and pink patterned with white, two-line initials accompanied by borders in the adjacent margin for the height of the ruling of burnished gold leaves and small red and blue flowers on hairline stems, one three-line initial on a burnished gold ground with bar to left similar border to three sides, ten large miniatures with bars on burnished gold grounds and similar borders to four sides, some incorporating flower and fruit sprays growing from islands of earth at the corners, all but the last over a three-line initial on a burnished gold ground (lacking at least ten leaves, at least three with miniatures, two after f.12, one after ff.39 and 42, two after f.60, three after f.111, at least two after f.112, neat cuts in margins of f.112 from excision of leaves to either side, section excised from margin f.2, original repairs in a few margins, slight smudging to some miniatures and borders, small paint losses to miniatures ff.79v and 111). 15th-century French brown calf over wooden boards tooled in blind with triple frames of a quatrefoil within a lozenge separated by fillets surrounding two vertical bands of the same tool framed by fillets, original vellum pastedowns (rebacked, lacking two clasps and catches, slight wear, corner of upper pastedown lost). Brown morocco book box by Riviere, title gilt.
Provenance:
(1) The book was written for someone in western France, in the border area between Brittany and Maine. The Office of the Virgin follows the use of Le Mans, whereas the Office of the Dead follows a use common to Sarum, Metz, parts of Normandy and, most relevantly here, Brittany, especially Rennes. St Julian of Le Mans (27 Jan.) and St Ivo (19 May), particularly revered in Brittany, are in red in the calendar; among those in black are the Breton saints Jovinus (2 March), translation of Moderandus/Moderannus, Bishop of Rennes (16 May), Armagil (16 Aug), Maclovius , patron of St Malo (15 Nov), and Clarus, Bishop of Nantes, whose relics were in Angers (10 Oct.). The Breton saints predominate over those from neighbouring areas like Renatus, Bishop of Angers (12 Nov.). In the litany, St Julian is invoked as well as St Albinus (Aubin), Bishop of Angers, whose cult was very evident in Le Mans among other places, and Melanus, Bishop of Rennes. The sainted abbess in the final miniature, without text, could be St Scholastica, the sister of St Benedict, whose relics had been translated to Le Mans; despite their almost total destruction, her cult survived and a confraternity in her honour was founded in 1464 at St-Pierre-la-Cour where the remnants were housed. Laval lies about halfway between Rennes and Le Mans and may have been the home of the first owner, as well as of the first recorded owner. If the abbess holds a pyx rather than an orb she could be St Clare, often shown with a monstrance but seldom with a crozier.
(2) Louise Rahier (1559/60-1620): Luise Rahire inside upper cover and ownership inscription as Louysse Rahier on front endleaf above Beudin in a different hand; inside the lower cover Je suis a Louise Rahier/ F. Beudin; Louise married Fleurien Beudin, sieur de Bargé (1557/8-1593), according to the note by her son Charles Beudin on f.12v. This records that Louise was the daughter of Jean Rahier, seigneur du Plessis, greffier, and Françoise, daughter of Guy Rahier, bailli d’Evron (fl. 1508-1540, seigneur de Lorron, in 1527 married to Renée Pélisson), and that of the six children of Louise and Fleurien, whose births between 1581 and 1589 are recorded in the calendar (the three eldest also on the verso of the final endleaf), three survived: Fleurien (b.1583) married to Renée; Louise (b. 1585) married to Pierre Lévêque, sieur de la Touffayère (apothecary, the couple were alive in 1629); Charles married to Marie le Maistre in 1617.
(3) Charles Beudin, seigneur de Bargé: in addition to the note on f.12, he also listed on the verso of the first flyleaf the six children of his marriage to Marie le Maistre, from Jacques (b.1618) to Daniel (b.1627). If he lived to a great age and were the Charles Beudin buried in the Cathedral of the Trinity at Laval in 1677, he was a lawyer. His annotations appear to have been made at the same time, indicating that he acquired the book after 1627. It may have passed from his mother to his elder brother, Fleurien the Younger, who stood godfather to Charles’s daughter Marie in 1621 and whose death date is to be discovered. Charles’s daughter Renée, born in 1623, could possibly be the Renée, adult daughter of Charles Beudin, seigneur de Bargé, involved in a dispute over chapel patronage in Laval in 1685, although the Louise Beudin associated with her in that action was born in 1742 and so is not the Louise, whose birth in 1626 is listed in the Hours. The surname is not unusual, making it difficult to recreate individual histories.
The Beudin of Bargé came from Laval, where they seem to have remained centred. The only place of birth recorded in the Hours is Mellay for Fleurien the Younger in 1583. This is presumably Meslay-en-Maine to the south-east of Laval, which was recorded because it was exceptional. Bargé itself may be the place incorporated into what is now Ballon-Saint-Mars, to the north of Le Mans. They were lawyers, merchants, doctors and apothecaries, rather than landed gentry. The Rahier flourished in Laval, chiefly as lawyers; by 1494 there was a family chapel in the cathedral of the Trinity in Laval. The seigneurie of Le Plessis, held by Louise’s father, lay to the south of Laval (Villiers-Charlemagne). See principally A. Angot, Dictionnaire historique, topographique et biographique de la Mayenne, 1900-1910.
(4) Estelle Doheny (1875-1958): her leather book label inside upper cover; purchased from W. H. Robinson, Catalogue 50, 1934, no 8; de Ricci Census, p.2243, no 11.
(5) The Edward Laurence Doheny Memorial Library, St John’s Seminary. Camarillo, California: gifted by Mrs Doheny; sold at Christie's, The Estelle Doheny Collection, Part II, Medieval and Renaissance Manuscripts, 2 December 1987, lot 159, to Tenschert.
(6) Tenschert, Leuchtendes Mittelalter I, Katalog 21, 1989, no 64
(7) Joost R. Ritman (b.1941): book label of the Bibliotheca Philosophica Hermetica inside upper cover; his private Collection, sold Sotheby’s A Selection of Illuminated Manuscripts […] the Property of Mr J.R. Ritman, sold for the Benefit of the Bibliotheca Philosophica Hermetica Amsterdam, 6 July 2000, lot 19.
Content: Calendar ff.1-12; Office of the Virgin, use of Le Mans interspersed with the Hours of the Cross, from f.32v, and of the Holy Ghost, from f.33v, ff:13-59: matins, lacking opening f.13, lauds f.22, prime f.34v, tierce, lacking opening f.40, sext, lacking opening f.43, none f.45v, vespers f.49, compline f.54v; opening of St John’s Gospel, lacking end of following prayer and possibly the other Gospel extracts, ff.59v-60v; Penitential Psalms and litany ff.61-79; Office of the Dead, use of Rennes, ff.79v-110v; Obsecro te, lacking end f.111; suffrage to St Christopher, lacking end f.112; ruled blank with miniature over two lines, border and bar on recto and border on verso f.113.
Illumination:
The brightly patterned miniatures are by the Master of Marguerite de Willerval, named from a Book of Hours for the Use of Angers in Brussels (KBR ms 10990), see E. König, Französische Buchmalerei um 1450, 1982, pp. 252-3. The mixture of uses in this Hours, Le Mans and Rennes, exemplifies the area in Western France where the Master found the clientele for his Books of Hours: in Anjou (also for Angers the Hours of Ysabeau d’Orenge, sold Sotheby’s 19 June 1990, lot 113), Maine (also for Le Mans, New York, Morgan Library, M 1040), Brittany (also for Rennes, Brussels, KBR ms IV 62) and Normandy (for Avranches, Rennes, Bibliothèque municipale ms 1334, and Lyon, Bibliothèque municipale ms 6023; for Coutances, sold Hôtel Drouot, 19 May 1976, lot 28).
König considered the Master to have been based in Rennes In the duchy of Brittany, which afforded comparative peace from the upheavals of the last phase of the Hundred Years War. The Master was familiar with the work of the Master of Marguerite of Orléans, thought to have produced his masterpiece and name work in Rennes; the densely worked borders of the Rahier-Beudin Hours are typical of manuscripts localised to Rennes, for instance, those of the Master of Walters 221, named from a Book of Hours in the Walters Art Museum, Baltimore. The larger plants in the corners of borders on ff.49, 61 and 79v relate to the Master of Marguerite of Orléans but their use in isolation is more reminiscent of illuminators localised to Angers, like the Jouvenel Master. The influence of the Rohan Master also suggests contact with Angers, where the Rohan Master was probably based when he illuminated both his name work and his great books for the Angevin ducal family. In the Rahier-Beudin Hours, the pathos of the Lamentation scene, f.111, conveyed through the evident and anguished distortion of Christ’s body, derives from the Rohan Master’s expressive manipulations of observed reality. Angers remained under French control, while Le Mans was ruled by the English from 1425 to 1448.
The consistency of style in the Willerval Master’s identified books, makes it hard to give a chronological interpretation to these different indications of place, apart from possibly associating his Norman links with his earlier career. His emphasis on contours and flat shapes, his delight in pattern, including the use of gold diapered backgrounds or skies strewn with golden stars, are comparable to trends in Normandy, as seen in the work of the Talbot and Fastolf Masters. Wherever he trained and worked, he may not have been as peripatetic as the range of his clients might suggest. Instead, as Diane E. Bootton observes ‘it is plausible that the Willerval Master chiefly worked at one place that had market connections over a broad geographic area in Western France’ (Manuscripts, Market and the Transition to Print in Late Medieval Brittany, 2010, p.69; this manuscript p.68).
From these diverse influences, the Willerval Master forged a distinctive style. In compositions structured by repeated blue, green and orange-red, comparatively flat settings contrast with the carefully modelled figures, often with green underpainting to shade the pale flesh tones. Landscapes, usually with a curly-waved river – with swans behind David, are constructed from overlapping conical hills, patterned with trees and plants; the Temple at the Presentation has silvery windows and an elaborate vaulted ceiling picked out in gold. The final leaf, fully illuminated despite the absence of the envisaged text, is consistent is style and was perhaps an addition, for some reason never completed, ordered by the first owner.
The Master reused his successful compositions, so that the Burial scene, for instance, is also found in the Hours in Rennes and in the Hours of Ysabeau d’Orenge. Ysabeau’s Hours also mark the Hours of the Virgin with miniatures of the Infancy of Christ, whereas a Passion cycle is more common in the Master’s work; in both cycles, he often introduced Lauds with only a large initial and border, as here f.22. The repeated compositions make obvious the variations in quality among his attributed works: the Rahier-Beudin Hours belongs with Ysabeau’s Hours, described as one of the Willerval Master’s finest when it was sold in 1990, and not with the more coarsely executed Hours in Rennes or Lyon.
The subjects of the miniatures are: the Crucifixion f.32v, the Nativity f.34v, the Presentation in the Temple f.45v, the Flight into Egypt f.49, the Coronation of the Virgin f.54v, penitent David in a landscape f.61, burial with the priest asperging the corpse f.79v, the Lamentation f.111, St Christopher carrying the Christ Child f.112, ?St Scholastica or St Clare (an abbess saint) and a martyred virgin saint f.113.
Special notice
No VAT is payable on the hammer price or the buyer's premium for this lot. Please see the VAT Symbols and Explanation section of the Conditions of Sale for further information