Beschreibung:

Details
Workshop of the Fastolf Master (fl. c.1420-60)
A leaf from a Missal, in Latin, illuminated manuscript on vellum [Rouen, c.1425-50]
A text leaf from what was once a deluxe Missal richly illuminated for an English patron by a close associate of the Fastolf Master.
327 x 223mm. The text on the recto for Saturday, 3rd week of Lent, with the introit for the feast of St Susanna, two columns of 26 lines written in brown ink in two sizes of a gothic liturgical hand, ruled space: 200 x 63mm., rubrics in red, capitals touched in yellow, one large initial 'U' in gold on a blue and red ground, three smaller initials in a similar style, three-sided border, two sets of contemporary foliation 'lxix' in blue within a gold cartouche in upper right-hand margin, and LXXX in blue and red at top, pinpricks survive (some minor cockling and marginal staining, verso with remnants of adhesive along outer margin and two small smudges not affecting text).
Provenance:
(1) The parent manuscript was likely made for an English patron: that Saint Romanus, Rouen’s patron saint, is accorded only a memorial in text to be found on another leaf from the parent volume, rather than the full mass for his feast day, suggests an English commission. The surviving miniature leaves are by a close associate of the Fastolf Master, an artist known to have worked for English patrons, including Sir William Porter, part of the English administration in Rouen during its occupation. The part-erasure of a reference to the pope on yet another leaf indicates the Missal remained in England, after the return of its owner, at least until the Reformation. The name ‘chiaves’ added in a 17th-century Italian hand on one of the leaves points to a translation to that country. 30 leaves from the parent manuscript appeared at Sotheby’s, 26 November 1985, lot 120 (8 of these were later sold at Christie's, 24 November-3 December 2015, lots 24 and 25).
(2) The present leaf was sold by Maggs in June 2019.
Most of the manuscripts that emanated from the Fastolf Master’s Rouen atelier were Hours for Rouen and other Norman uses (see also Paris, Bibl. de l’Arsenal, ms. 560, use of Coutances, where stylistic similarities can be seen): only one other Missal is known from his shop, held at Keble College, Oxford (Ms. 38), and the Schoenberg database records only 15 Rouen Missals of the 15th century to have passed through public auction. The deluxe manuscript from which this leaf came must have borne an ambitious cycle of illumination, perhaps trumped only by the Book of Hours made for Sir William Porter (Morgan M.105) with 75 extant miniatures.