Beschreibung:

Collection of leaves from devotional books, in Latin, decorated or illuminated manuscripts on parchment [fourteenth and fifteenth century] Sixteen leaves (including a 6-leaf Calendar): (i) leaf from a Breviary, with double column of 32 lines, capitals with penwork decoration, red rubrics, initials in gold or blue with black or red penwork decoration, largest initials in variegated panels of gold and blue, innermost side of each text column decorated with gold and blue leaf shapes, seventeenth- or eighteenth-century inscriptions at head of each page describing contents, slightly cockled at edges, else excellent and glittering condition, 179 by 119mm., France, c. 1350; (ii) leaf from a Diurnal Breviary of Carthusian Use, single column of 5/6 lines, red rubrics, splendid initial 'C' ('Cum complerentur dies pentecostes ...') in pink heightened with white penwork, enclosing a circle of red and blue petals around central flowerhead, on burnished gold ground, full border of gold and coloured text bars and foliage terminating in ivy-leaves, space left empty for miniature, trimmed at edges with losses in places to border decoration, else excellent condition, 97 by 70mm.; (iii) two leaves from a Breviary, with double column of 29 lines in hand of the scribe Jean d'Aussert, red rubrics, 2-line initials in pink or blue heightened with white enclosing foliage and on gold grounds, contemporary folio nos. 'cccxli' and 'cccc' at upper outer corner of versos (with instructions to rubricator just visible at edges of leaves above the first of these), slightly cockled at edges, else excellent condition, 188 by 142mm., eastern France (Dôle), c. 1458; plus a complete Calendar from a Breviary on 6 leaves, with numerous saints local to Autun and the dedication of the church of St. Lazarus there on 30 December (with seventeenth century inscription on first leaf: 'Carmeli Semuriensis. G. 130', and hence then in library of the Carmelites of Semur-en-Auxois, about 40 miles north of Autun, and the parent volume sold as part of the library of the 6th Baronet of Pitsligo in Sotheby's, 6 December 2016, lot 29, and again Reiss & Sohn, 16 May 2017, lot 208), and a leaf from a charming Breviary with a king's head inside an initial, and a bird and a human-headed bird drollery standing on other initials (this acquired in Sotheby's, 19 June 2001, lot 10), and other leaves with decorated borders, illuminated initials and fine penwork decoration The first item here comes from a Breviary obtained by Otto Ege in Paris in 1928 (recorded in S. de Ricci, Census of Medieval and Renaissance Manuscripts in the United States, 1937, II, p. 1947, no. 35, and dispersed by Ege as part of his Fifty Original Leaves: see S. Gwara, Otto Ege's Manuscripts, 2013, pp. 125-6, his HL 23). The leaves in item (iii) come from a codex named the Carondelet Breviary by Sotheby's in 2015 (see below; and to be distinguished from that already given the same name and discussed in Illuminating the Renaissance, 2003, no. 122). The volume concerned here was commissioned by Étienne Carondelot, canon of the Church of Notre Dame in Dôle, from the scribe Jean d'Aussert in 1458. The parent manuscript was sold in Sothmann, Amsterdam, 28 February 1985, and then dispersed. The Catharijneconvent Museum, Utrecht, acquired fol. 206 in 2001, and other leaves have appeared in Sotheby's, 8 December 2015, lot 5 (part e) and Hartung & Hartung, 6-7 November 2017, lot 30.