ST JOHN THE BAPTIST, a leaf from a Book of Hours illuminated by the Master of Jacques de Luxembourg [Eastern France or Paris, c.1465]

ST JOHN THE BAPTIST, a leaf from a Book of Hours illuminated by the Master of Jacques de Luxembourg [Eastern France or Paris, c.1465]

A vibrant and lively example of the work of the Master of Jacques de Luxembourg, active in Paris in the 1460s and 70s.

225 x 170mm. The miniature opens an antiphon to St John the Baptist (somewhat faded, some marginal spotting). Framed.

Provenance: (1) The parent manuscript belonged at an early date to a member of the Ibarrola family of Navarre (the arms on the now lost binding were described by M.R. James in 1898). An inscription on f.2 indicates a Portuguese ownership. (2) Henry Yates Thompson (1838-1928), the great British bibliophile and collector, purchased from Morgand of Paris in April 1894 and no 15 in A Descriptive Catalogue of Fifty Manuscripts from the Collection of Henry Yates Thompson, 1898. The present leaf was f.23. (3) Sotheby’s 3 May 1904, lot 31, thereafter broken up. Two sister leaves are at the Cleveland Museum of Art, The Jeanne Miles Blackburn Collection, 2011.63 (see S.N. Fliegel, The Jeanne Miles Blackburn Collection of Manuscript Illuminations, Cleveland, 1999, no 49); a leaf with St Luke appeared on the cover of Bruce Ferrini, Catalogue 3 (1995); a leaf with St Apollonia appeared in Hunersdorff Rare Books & Manscripts, Medicine: Five Centuries of Books and Manuscripts (London, 1992), no 7; a leaf with St Quentin, sold at Arno Winterberg, Auktion 5: Kunst des 15. bis 20. Jahrhunderts, Heidelberg, 14 October 1972, lot 184; and a leaf depicting St James the Pilgrim was sold at Christie’s, Script and Illumination: Leaves from Medieval and Renaissance Manuscripts, 24 November – 3 December 2015, lot 34. See Peter Kidd, https://mssprovenance.blogspot.com, for the intriguing history of this manuscript.

The Master of Jacques de Luxembourg is named after the patron for whom he illuminated a Book of Hours now at the Getty (Ludwig MS. IX. II), Jacques de Luxembourg, Seigneur de Richebourg, Chambellan du Roi under Louis XI and lieutenant general of the French army. Though known to have worked in Paris, his narrative style and earthy sense of visual detail (particularly his landscapes and architectural settings, evident in the present miniature with the cityscape rising amid rolling hills, forests and bodies of water) reveal a debt to Flemish art.

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