[ILLUMINATION] - Lot 8

[ILLUMINATION] Three double-leaf folios from an illuminated Pontifical containing musical notation. In Latin, illuminated manuscript on parchment. France, Paris, second quarter of the 14th century or third quarter of the 14th century. Illuminated by artists influenced by Jean Pucelle (active in Paris from 1319 to 1334). Dimensions of the leaves (folded): 280x202mm Three double-leaf pages, Gothic script, text in two columns, square notation on staves drawn in red on four lines, ruled with ink, contemporary and decorated foliation: CLXX [170] / CLXXI [171] / CLXXIIII [174] / CLXXV [175] / CXCIII [193] / CC [200], headings in red, small initials in burnished gold on pink and blue backgrounds with white highlights, larger ornate initials three lines high in blue or pink on pink or blue backgrounds with white highlights and burnished gold decoration and colored vine leaves, with extensions of colored vine leaves in the margins, large burnished gold, blue, and pink scrolls with motifs of zoomorphic hybrids or dragons, or a hooded figure with an owl, crowned head (St. Louis?), scroll initials; large historiated initial P depicting a mitered bishop (P/er omnia secula seculorum… (fol. 3 recto, right column)); musical staves drawn in red ink, with square notation. These three double-leaf pages are taken from a dismembered Pontifical that was certainly very luxurious. A “Pontifical” contains the texts of the ceremonies incumbent upon bishops and pontiffs. In terms of style, these leaves can be compared to examples associated with Parisian illumination from the second quarter of the 14th century (or the beginning of the third quarter?), based on their layout, execution, and certain iconographic details. These folios seem to us to be related to the work of the “Pucellian” illuminators influenced by Jean Pucelle, to whom we owe, for example, the Belleville Breviary (Paris, BnF, Latin 10483 and 10484), the Hours of Jeanne d’Evreux, now held in New York at The Cloisters, Acc. 54. 1.2 (Fastes du gothique, 1981, no. 239) and the Breviary of Jeanne d’Evreux (Chantilly, Musée Condé, MS 51). Further research is needed, but it is also worth noting the similarity of the running titles in the upper margins with the folio numbering in Roman numerals and a filigree decoration that recall the work of an ornamentalist close to Jean Pucelle, namely Jacquet Maci, for example in an illuminated Bible (Montpellier, Interuniversity Library, H 195) [see F. Avril, “A Parisian Ornamental Illuminator of the First Half of the 14th Century: Jacob Mathey (Jaquet Maci?)”, in Bulletin monumental (1971), 129, no. 4, pp. 249–264]. SEE THE COMPLETE ENTRY IN THE PDF CATALOG (downloadable)