Substantial remnant of a Psalter with Canticles and a Litany, with

Substantial remnant of a Psalter with Canticles and a Litany, with over 200 humans, monkeys, fish, hare, dogs and other animals used as line-fillers, initials and marginal additions, in Latin, illuminated manuscript on vellum, [north eastern France or adjacent Southern Netherlands, late thirteenth century], 44 leaves (plus two modern endleaves at front, and the same at back), wanting leaves at front and end, and a number of leaves throughout (restored in nineteenth-century with some leaves bound in on guards then, and thus not easily collatable, but a sense of losses possible from what remains of the Early Modern foliation: an unnumbered leaf, 29, 33, 45, 124[?], 77, 134-138, 140-141, 143, 147, 172[?], 181-183, 185, 187, an unnumbered leaf, 190-203, 208-10 [including unnumbered inserted later leaf from a later manuscript Book of Hours of c. 1450], 212, where some foliation numbers have been erased, and others partly so; that foliation not used here), text in single column of 17 lines of a fine gothic bookhand, one-line initials in burnished gold on bi-coloured blue and dark pink grounds, every Psalm or Canticle opening with a 2-line initial in same colours on gold grounds (49 of these present), containing foliage (with those on fols. 1r, 4rv, 14r, 15v, 17r, 18r, 19v, and 34r, including two bearded men’s heads in cowls, a long-necked dragon biting a golden bezant with a bird perched on the initial, a rabbit on top of a lacertine animal with a beaked bird’s face, four other lacertine animals and a red faced grimacing creature in a cowl, most probably an ape), several line-fillers per page in coloured and gold foliage, with five enclosing winged lion or demonic faces facing the viewer, 90 lacertine animals with dragon-, dog- or long-beaked bird-faces (often with these in pairs mirroring each other), 79 with startled-looking fish (again often with these in pairs), four with fish and lacertine animals facing each other, six with hares being chased by hounds or hares and hounds on their own, eleven with an animal’s mask (a few of these snapping at bezants or in two cases gulping down a fish) and a single demonic mask facing the viewer, a few near-contemporary textual additions in the margins, some Early Modern marginalia, small losses to gold and paintwork in places, small spots and stains, a few smudges, trimmed at edges (with affect to edges of initials at base and occasionally outer vertical edges), overall in fair and presentable condition, 175 x 130mm.; bound in nineteenth-century black morocco over pasteboards, gilt-tooled with floral rollstamps inside turn-ups, marbled doublures and red edges, some small scuffs and binding split from text-block at front of volume, in modern fitted cloth-covered case *** Provenance: 1. Written and illuminated for a patron of some wealth, who appears to have lived in the vicinity of the French-Belgium border in the late thirteenth century: with local saints, Gaugeric of Cambrai and Arras and Amand of Tournai, as well as more widely worshipped regional saints, Lambert of Liège and Rumold of Malines/Mechelen, in the Litany. 2. Georgine Rocher: her ex libris in a seventeenth-century hand in lower margin of fol. 14r. A woman of this name who lived in Ille-et-Vilaine, and married a Rene Neveu, is recorded as living 1654-76, and may well be this owner. 3. Apparently in French-speaking trade in mid-twentieth century, with erased pencil notes on the contents in that language on back endleaf. 4. Sold in Sotheby’s, 12 July 1971, lot 49, and then resold in same rooms on 6 December 1971, lot 34, for £240, to Maggs Bros. 5. Neil L.F. Phillips, Q.C. (1924-97); sold by his estate in Sotheby’s, 6 July 2006, lot 44, to the current owner. Illumination: The layout of Psalters, primarily a text of Latin verse, lends itself well to the inclusion of a wealth of illuminated or decorated line-fillers, but the artist here has taken this to the extreme, with an enormous number of these including charming tiny depictions of animals. The animal’s masks that are gulping down fish, with the fish-tails visible as the rest of the creature slides down the animal mask’s throat, are worth especial mention. In addition to these, there are nine historiated initials remaining, containing two detailed bearded men’s heads wearing cowls, and a red-faced grimacing creature in a cowl, almost certainly a monkey. A close parallel for this entrancing abundance of animal line-fillers can be found in the ‘Moore Psalter’ (now Cambridge, University Library, Ee.iv.24: see Alison Stones, Gothic Manuscripts, 1260-1320, 2013-14, her I-9), made in Paris c. 1270, for English Use, and this abundance of decoration may well have been an individual aspect of the commission of the volume.

Stima:€17,916.48

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