ST SEBASTIAN, miniature on a leaf from a Book of Hours [Western France, ?Rennes, c.1435]

ST SEBASTIAN, miniature on a leaf from a Book of Hours [Western France, ?Rennes, c.1435]

A sparkling miniature by the Master of Walters 221, an artist named from a Book of Hours in the Walters Art Museum in Baltimore, usually dated to the 1430s, where St Sebastian appears in a very similar composition.

180 x 141mm. The miniature opening a prayer in French (Sonet, Répertoire, no 1888) invoking the Saint for protection against the plague. Verso with 14 lines of text (leaf trimmed close to borders). Mounted and framed. Provenance: 1) Pierre Berès, Manuscrits et enluminures, cat 66, 1975, lot 10. 2) Private Collection, Switzerland. 3) Jörn Günther, Miniatures and Illuminated Leaves from the 12th to the 16th centuries, Catalogue 6, 2002, no 35.

Five other miniatures from the same Book of Hours are known: the Betrayal of Christ (lot 509); Christ brought before Caiaphas (Sotheby’s, 5 July 2016, lot 36); the Entombment of Christ (Pierre Berès, Manuscrits et enluminures, Catalogue 66, 1975, no 8); the Last Judgement (ibid., no 9); the Pieta (Musée Dobrée, Nantes, inv. 896.1.4159), demonstrating that the Book of Hours was already dismembered in the 19th century (P. Charron et al., Trésors enluminés des musées de France, Pays de Loire et du Centre, 2013, no 27).

The Master of Walters 221 was an important illuminator active in western France, perhaps based in Rennes, who developed Parisian conventions, brought west by the Master of Marguerite d'Orléans, into an expressive style combining carefully modelled three-dimensional figures with a sense for surface pattern emphasized by gleaming gold and bright colours (see Diane E. Booton, Manuscripts, Market and the Transition to Print in Late Medieval Brittany, 2010, pp.53-58). These continue in the flower and fruit motifs of the full border.