Beschreibung:

Three leaves from a Book of Hours, each with delicately painted flowers and in one case a jewel, attributable to Cornelia van Wulfschkercke, a Carmelite nun from the Carmelite convent of Sion, Bruges, or her immediate workshop, in Latin, manuscript leaves on parchment [Low Countries (Bruges), c. 1510-20] Three leaves, each with 17 lines in a rounded late gothic bookhand with numerous ornamental penstrokes, terracotta-red rubrics, one leaf with a single 2-line initial in brown heightened with liquid gold penstrokes on burgundy grounds, each with finely painted realistic flower cuttings and on one occasion a medieval jewel in the form of cross in its vertical outer border, these identifiable as the work of Cornelia van Wulfschkercke or her immediate workshop (see below), some small spots and stains, else excellent and fresh condition, each leaf 126 by 87mm. From a dispersed Book of Hours identified by A.M.W. As-Vijvers as part of a small group of such books produced in Ghent or Bruges c. 1500-10 with single motifs in the borders. The subsequent tracing of miniature leaves enabled the identification of the artist as Cornelia van Wulfschkercke or her immediate workshop (see A.M.W. As-Vijvers, 'Manuscript Production in a Carmelite Convent: the Case of Cornelia van Wulfschkercke, Books of Hours Reconsidered, 2013, pp. 279-96 and 519-20, especially the prayerbook now Amsterdam, Free Library, MS. XV.05502, and the Ayala-Rodriguez Hours now Brussels, Bibliothèque Royale, MS. IV 104; compare also the flowers here with those in the border of the Prayerbook of Marguerite Clerckx, now Princeton, Garrett MS. 63, reproduced as fig. 10 on p. 290 and pl. 70 on p. 520). Cornelia van Wulfschkercke (d. 1540) entered the Carmelite convent of Sion, Bruges, by 1495, took her vows in 1501, and forged a career as a female illuminator producing numerous books for patrons outside of the convent (see As-Vijvers, 2013 on their commercial output, and note that in 1512 and 1513 Sion rented a stall in the Bruges market arcade where luxury goods were sold: see J. Wilson, 'Marketing Paintings in late Medieval Flanders and Brabant', in Artistes, Artisans et Production artistique at Moyen Age, 1990, p. 624). She was trained as an artist by Grietkin Scheppers in 1503, who herself may have been the widow of an illuminator, and they appear to have both worked on a Gradual (now Paris, Bibliotheque Mazarine, MS. 432), where she is named in the colophon. Many of the convent's inmates were involved in book production and some twenty-three surviving manuscripts can now be identified as their work, with Cornelia van Wulfschkercke at its head. Any Book of Hours attributable to a named artist is a rarity, but a Book of Hours illuminated by a woman is altogether exceptional. From the collection of Roger Martin (1939-2020) of Grimsby.