Beschreibung:

Dunois Master (fl.1430-65) The Entombment, miniature on a leaf from a Book of Hours [Paris, c.1450] One of the finest miniatures from a major Book of Hours painted in semi-grisaille by the dominant Parisian illuminator of the mid-15th century, the Dunois Master. 117 x 87mm. The large arch-topped miniature with the Entombment of Christ above an illuminated initial 'C' and three lines of text opening Compline ('Converte nos Deus [...]'), all within a full border of acanthus and flowers, the bas-de-page with a lamentation scene (negligible loss of pigment to Christ's face and the faces of some of the mourners in the border, else in excellent condition). Laid down on a card mount. Provenance: (1) Frédéric Spitzer (1815-90), of Paris: his sale, 14 April-16 June 1893, lot 3272. (2) Paris, Hôtel Drouot, 14 November 1975, lot 36. (3) S. Hindman, Medieval & Renaissance Miniature Painting, Ferrini and Fogg, 1988, pp.50-1 and 123, no 25. (4) Ferrini, cat.2 (1989), no 18. (5) Les Enluminures, cat.7 (1998), no 30. (6) Sotheby's, 6 July 2010, lot 19. The present leaf was one of 16 at the Spitzer sale in 1893: one is now in Paris, Collection Wildenstein, Musée Marmottan, Ms. 149; four are at the Victoria and Albert Museum, E.4580-83, from the collection of George Salting; a further leaf was sold at Sotheby's, 17 June 1997, lot 27 and another at Christie's, 12 June 2013, lot 13. Although similar in dimensions and overall design, the leaves differ sufficiently in layout and language to suggest that they come from two distinct series, possibly from two separate books or from a book that, like the Dunois Hours itself, was extended with further texts and miniatures. The Dunois Master, the successor of the Bedford Master as the leading painter in Paris, worked extensively for the French court, as in his name work, the Count of Dunois’s Book of Hours (British Library, Yates Thompson 3), and the Hours of Simon de Varie, dated 1455 (J. Paul Getty Museum and The Hague KB). The present leaf came from a manuscript of extraordinary iconographic richness and delicacy of execution, perhaps produced for a member of the Jouvenel des Ursins family: their acanthus emblem has been identified on one leaf but the plant may be purely decorative; the very rare miniatures of the Breton saints Donatian and Rogatian and Mandetus (whereabouts unknown) suggest a Breton patron, perhaps associated with Prigent de Coëtivy for whom the Dunois Master painted between 1444 and 1450 a similarly refined semi-grisaille Hours with additional border scenes (Chester Beatty Library W 82). The dismembered leaves are slightly later, comparable to those in the Master's Hours of Guillaume Jouvenel des Ursins of c.1450 (BnF ms n.acq.lat. 3266, see N. Reynaud,'Les heures du chancelier Guillaume Jouvenel de Ursins et la peinture parisienne autour de 1440', Revue de l'Art, 126, 1999, pp.23-35).