Beschreibung:

THE CRUCIFIXION: a large miniature and full border on a leaf from a Book of Hours, in Latin, illuminated manuscript on vellum[France (Paris?), 15th century (c. 1460)]
a single leaf, c. 115 × 80mm, the recto with 12 lines written in gothic script, the verso with the start of None in the Hours of the Virgin with a LARGE MINIATURE AND FULL BORDER, the miniature depicting with Christ hanging dead and profusely bleeding, the Virgin and St John to the left, the centurion and a crowd of soldiers to the right, above a 3-line initial ‘D’(eus in adiutorium), the border with stylised and semi-naturalistic acanthus, foliage, and flowers, incorporating a naturalistic bird; slight cockling, some thumbing, slight discolouration to the outer edge of the border, some pigment loss, especially areas of lead white, revealing the under-drawing of St John’s draperies, otherwise in good condition; framed.
PROVENANCESold in our rooms, 7 July 2009, lot 4 (col. ill.); bought by:The Boehlen Collection, Bern, MS 1426
ILLUMINATIONThe style is similar to that of the Coëtivy Master, ‘the most important artist working in Paris in the third quarter of the century’ as ‘an illuminator of the first order’, panel painter, and designer of stained-glass windows and tapestries, who is named after a Book of Hours in Vienna (ÖNB, Cod. 1929) made for Olivier de Coëtivy and his wife, Marie de Valois, daughter of Charles VII (Avril & Renaud, 1993, pp. 58–63). Previously identified as Henri de Vulcop his works and known patronage correspond more closely to the documented painter and illuminator Colin d’Amiens (Rouse & Rouse, 2000, II, pp. 98–99). Whatever the artist’s real name, we would like to know his relationship to the painter of the present leaf. Most well-documented artists show differences of style within their work: it is entirely to be expected that their style will evolve over the course of a career, and that some commissions will be executed faster or slower, or with greater or less care, than others. Scale is another issue, as finer detail can be applied in a larger work than a smaller one. So too is the extent to which apprentices or colleagues might collaborate on an individual miniature: a highly successful, in-demand and busy artist like the Coëtivy Master would surely have trained other illuminators to work with him, teaching them to follow his style closely, even if their abilities did not match his. It is probably to such a pupil that we should attribute the present miniature.
REFERENCESF. Avril and N. Reynaud, Les manuscrits à peintures en France, 1440–1520 (Paris, 1993).
Richard H. Rouse and Mary A. Rouse, “Illiterati et Uxorati”. Manuscripts and Their Makers: Commercial Book Producers in Medieval Paris, 1200–1500, 2 vols (Turnhout, 2000).