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Detailed record for Harley 2940
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| Title |
Book of Hours, Use of Paris |
| Origin |
France, Central (Paris) |
| Date |
c. 1420 |
| Language |
Latin, with some French |
| Script |
Gothic |
| Artists |
Attributed to the workshops of or the Boucicaut and the Rohan Masters |
| Decoration |
6 full-page miniatures with large decorated initials and full foliate borders, at the beginning of the Hours of the Virgin and the Office of the Dead including historiated medallions, in colours and gold, for major text divisions (ff. 38 [with medallions], 90, 110, 118, 126 (with medallions), 175 (with an inhabited initia)). Large or small decorated foliate initials with full foliate borders, in colours and gold, for minor text divisions in the Hours of the Virgin (ff. 49v, 60v, 66v (with a three-sided borders), 71, 74v, 78v, 85). Small decorated foliate initials (2 lines) with three-sided foliate borders, in colours and gold. Small initials and line fillers in gold on red and blue grounds. |
| Dimensions in mm |
195 x 135 (95 x 65) |
| Official foliation |
ff. 183 (+ 1 paper and 2 unfoliated medieval parchment flyleaves [the first parchment leaf affixed to a paper flyleaf] at the beginning and 1 unfoliated medieval parchment flyleaf [affixed to a paper flyleaf] and 1 paper flyleaf at the end) |
| Form |
Parchment codex |
| Binding |
BM/BL in-house. Diced brown calf; gilt edges. |
| Provenance |
Perhaps for a woman as the prayers Obsecro te and O intemerata use the feminine form 'michi famule tue' (f. 20v-21) and 'peccatrici miserrime' (f. 24).
Inscribed, 17th? century: '227' (3rd flyleaf, lower right corner).
The Harley Collection, formed by Robert Harley (b. 1661, d. 1724), 1st earl of Oxford and Mortimer, politician, and Edward Harley (b. 1689, d. 1741), 2nd earl of Oxford and Mortimer, book collector and patron of the arts, inscribed as usual by their librarian, Humfrey Wanley '5 Septembris, 1720.' (3rd flyleaf). Edward Harley bequeathed the library to his widow, Henrietta, née Cavendish Holles (b. 1694, d. 1755) during her lifetime and thereafter to their daughter, Margaret Cavendish Bentinck (b. 1715, d.1785), duchess of Portland; the manuscripts were sold by the Countess and the Duchess in 1753 to the nation for £10,000 (a fraction of their contemporary value) under the Act of Parliament that also established the British Museum; the Harley manuscripts form one of the foundation collections of the British Library. |
| Select bibliography |
A Catalogue of the Harleian Manuscripts in the British Museum, 4 vols (London: [n. pub.], 1808-12), II, no. 2940.
Walter de Gray Birch and Henry Jenner, Early Drawings and Illuminations: An Introduction to the Study of Illustrated Manuscripts (London: Bagster and Sons, 1879), p. 17.
Millard Meiss, with Kathleen Morand and Edith W. Kirsch, French Painting in the Time of Jean de Berry: The Boucicaut Master(London: Phaidon, 1968), p. 96, figs. 322, 323.
Millard Meiss, with Sharon Off Dunlap Smith and Elizabeth Home Beaton, French Painting in the Time of Jean de Berry: The Limbourgs and Their Contemporaries, 2 vols (London: Thames and Hudson, 1974), I, p. 402.
James Douglas Farquhar, Creation and Imitation: The Work of a Fifteenth-Century Manuscript Illuminator, Nova University Studies in the Humanities, 1 (Fort Lauderdale: Nova, 1976), pl. 23.
Gabriele Bartz, Der Boucicaut Meister: Ein unbekanntes Stundenbuch, Illuminationen: Studien und Monographien 1, ed. by Heribert Tenschert (Rotthalmünster: Kölbl, 1999), p. 116.
Janet Backhouse, Illumination from Book of Hours (London: British Library, 2004), no. 27. |
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f. 38
Annunciation |
ff. 89v-90
David |
f. 90
David penitent |
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f. 110
Crucifixion |
f. 175
Virgin and Child |
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