Sold Antiques

IM-863:  (165x135mm) Original leaf from a richly illuminated manuscript Psalter/Prayer-book. 23-24 lines of Latin text. Written in unusual gothic cursive script on animal vellum. (For sister leaves see The Blackburn Collection of Manuscript Illuminations, The Cleveland Museum of Art).

North Germany, (Hildesheim?) c. 1524.

Four illuminated three-line initials in gold or silver on sepia, gray or pink ground with silver or gold tracery. Elaborate panel borders with full gold ground strewn with diverse floral motifs, including a man wearing a fool's attire and carrying a log of wood and (verso) a woman in a multi-colored coat holding a baby!

The three-line illuminated ''G'' begins the prayer: ''Graciam tuam...'' (Pour forth, we beseech Thee, O Lord, Thy grace into our hearts, that we, to whom the incarnation of Christ, Thy Son, was made known by the message of an angel, may by His passion and cross be brought to the glory of His resurrection, through the same Christ our Lord).

This highly personalized prayer-book was written and illuminated in Germany, as evidenced by the painted Arms of Mansfeld (a prominent North German family) on a leaf, and the inclusion of St. Godehard (d. 1038), bishop of Hildesheim, portrayed as a miniature on another leaf. The date 1524 occurs in two locations in the prayer-book.