[LIGHTING] Leaf from a book of hours, beginning of the Hours of the Cross (matins). Crucifixion. In Latin, brown ink, gouache and burnished gold on parchment. France, Troyes, circa 1460. Some rubbing to the nimbus and burnished gold in the diapered background. Sheet size: 143x187mm Recto: Curved miniature surrounded by illuminated borders decorated with colored acanthus, vine leaves and gold besants, floral motifs and birds on a reserved background, large initial in blue with white highlights on a gold background and colored vines, 4 lines of text, Gothic script; text on recto, beginning of the Hours of the Cross (matins). Verso: 15 lines of text, Gothic script, illuminated border in outer margin, gilded vine leaves and besants, foliage, colored flowers; burnished gold initials (1 to 2 lines high) on pink and blue backgrounds with white highlights; endpapers in the same style. Text on verso, continuation of the Hours of the Cross for matins. This leaf is taken from the same Book of Hours as the leaf featuring Saint John on the Isle of Patmos (see lot 12). The illumination is attributable to the Master of the Troyes Missal. This crucifixion has obvious similarities with the one illustrating the Canon of the Mass in a Missal used in Troyes (Paris, BnF, Latin 865A). The manuscript Paris, BnF, Latin 856A was copied by Jean Coquet, canon of Saint-Quentin de Beauvais, and the miniatures betray a certain degree of archaism: "It is indeed under the obvious ascendancy of the style of the late continuators of the Master of Bedford, a style which persisted in Paris until the middle of the century and even beyond, that the painter of Lat. 856A, but this style is interpreted here with a more powerful accent, a fuller treatment of the human figure, and is felt in the monumental plasticity that took hold in painting from the third quarter of the century onwards... The pictorial execution of the illustrations and borders makes this missal appear to be one of the artist's most meticulous works" (Avril, in Avril et Reynaud, Les manuscrits à peintures 1440-1520, Paris, 1993, no. 97, pp. 182-183, reproduction of the Crucifixion on p. 183). The borders of the present folio are very similar to those of the Missel de Troyes, with the same decoration and birds in the margins, suggesting a date of circa 1460.