Collection ID: 0054 | Metadata type: TEI | TEI XML | Data

Title

Book of Hours

Other related names

• Léon Gruel, former owner (http://id.loc.gov/authorities/names/nr94004085)
• Henry Walters, former owner (http://id.loc.gov/authorities/names/nr94027104)

Call number

W.87
(Baltimore, Walters Art Museum)

Publisher

Walters Art Museum

Language

Latin; Old French (842-ca. 1400)

Origin

Place

Flanders (Ghent?)

Summary

This Book of Hours was made ca. 1310-20, likely in Ghent. It was badly rebound with a sixteenth-century Flemish binding by Léon Gruel in Paris at the end of the nineteenth or early twentieth century, and the initials of Gruel and Engelmann are printed on the bookplate on the front pastedown. The manuscript lacks its calendar, and the text is incomplete and misbound. In the fourteenth century a prayer for Communion, written in French, was added at the end of the book. Initials in gold, blue and pink mark the divisions of the text. The manuscript is richly illuminated with drolleries; painted on the borders of each folio, they would have amused the reader with their playful animals, hybrids, and human figures.

Notes

• Incomplete; Calendar is missing; All sections misbound
   
• Fols. 1r - 80v, the Hours of the Virgin: Use unidentifiable; Text incomplete and misbound; Content reconstructed by Judith Oliver as follows: Fols. 2-4, 1, 28, and 71: Matins; Fols. 38-40: Lauds; Fol. 5: Prime (?); Fols. 8, 7, 10, and 29r-v: Terce, ending with rubric for Sext; Fols. 25, and 33: None; Fols. 52, 58, 53-56: Vespers; Fols. 75-79, 80r-v: Compline
   
• Fols. 87r - 112r, the Office of the Dead: Fols. 81r-83r: Psalm 6; Fols. 83v, 86r-v: Psalm 12; Fols. 84r-v: Psalm 66; Fols. 85r-v: Psalm 149; Fols. 87r-88v: Lesson 1; Fols. 88v-90r: Lesson 2; Fols. 90r-98r: Lesson 3; Fols. 98r-v: Lesson 4; gap after fol. 98v; Fols. 99r-v: end of Lesson 5; Fols. 99v-112r: Lesson 6
   
• Fols. 112v - 112v, Communion Prayer: Early addition; Communion prayer French translation of "Dominus non sum dignus"
   
• Parchment, thin to medium-weight, well prepared on both sides; Trimmed at the top, bottom, and fore-edge, as evinced by drolleries and catchwords which are sometimes cropped; Modern parchment flyleaves
   

Extent

4.7 cm wide by 5.0 cm high bound to 6.7 cm wide by 10.2 cm high

Foliation

i+112+i; Modern pencil foliation upper-right corners, rectos

Collation

Formula: Undetermined; Mainly individual leaves, hookguarded or tipped out of order; Tight binding restricts the view

Support

Parchment

Catchwords

Catchwords cropped at the bottom, written at lower right on fols. 19v, 48v, 67v, 72v, 93v, and 105v

Binding

The binding is not original; Sixteenth-century brown calf binding; Rebacked in the nineteenth-twentieth century by Léon Gruel; Front and back boards are stamped with framing fillets; Two vertical bands at the center are inhabited by six animals within vine spirals; On front and back boards an inscription around the central panels writes "DEUS DET / NOBIS SUA[M] PACE[M] ET / POST MORTE[M] / VITA[M] ETERNA[M] AMEN," spine rounded and backed; Yellow formerly on the edges has been scraped; A comparable binding layout with inscription and panels with pairs of animals is signed by the Flemish binder Iohannes Bosscaert on a book printed in 1526 (Weale 1894, no. 416)

Layout

Columns: 1; Ruled lines: 10; Ruled in lead

Decoration

Illuminated initials in gold on blue or pink ground (2 lines) for major divisions; Secondary divisions (1 line); Either lower or top margins of each folio depicts drolleries with fanciful animals, hybrids, humans; Overtly religious imagery is rare (for example the Holy Face on fol. 64v); Initials on fols. 62r, 67v, 76v, and 79r contain heads; Line fillers with geometric motifs or beast head in blue and pink on gold ground; Rubrics in red; Text in dark brown ink

Script

Text in well-formed textura formata, with major medial pauses marked by punctus elevatus, and final pauses by punctus or unmarked

Provenance

• Created ca. 1310-20, likely in Ghent.
   
• Léon Gruel, Paris, nineteenth-twentieth century [Bookplate engraved G E (Gruel and Engelmann) on front pastedown is inscribed "no. 1019"].
   
• Henry Walters, Baltimore, purchased from Gruel between 1895 and 1931 [Ex libris on front flyleaf recto].
   
• Walters Art Museum, 1931, by Henry Walters' bequest.
   

Related resources

• Weale, William H. J. Bookbindings and Rubbings of Bindings in the National Art Library South Kensington Museum. Vol. 2. London: Eyre and Spottiswoode, 1894; pp. 194-5, cat. no. 416 **see for binding comparison
• De Ricci, Seymour, and W. J. Wilson. Census of Medieval and Renaissance Manuscripts in the United States and Canada. Vol. 1. New York: H. W. Wilson Company, 1935; p. 783, cat. no. 161.
• Randall, Lilian M. C. Images in the Margins of Gothic Manuscripts. Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1966; p. 38, figs. 107, 436.
• Randall, Lilian M. C. Medieval and Renaissance Manuscripts in the Walters Art Gallery. Vol. 3, Belgium, 1250-1530. Baltimore and London: Johns Hopkins University Press in association with the Walters Art Gallery, 1997; pp. 72-74, cat. no. 224.
• Manion, Margaret M. The Felton Illuminated Manuscripts in the National Gallery of Victoria. Melbourne, Australia: Macmillan Art Publishing and the National Gallery of Victoria, 2005; p. 375 (n. 22)
• Dillon, Emma. "Representing Obscene Sound." In Medieval Obscenities, edited by Nicola McDonald, 55-84. Woodbridge, Suffolk: York Medieval Press, 2006; p. 75
• Wirth, Jean, and Isabelle Engammare. Les marges à drôleries des manuscrits gothiques, 1250-1350. Geneva: Librairie Droz, 2008; 234.

Keywords

• Book of Hours
• Flanders
• 14th century
• Grotesques
• Christian
• Flemish
• Binding
• Book
• Codex
• Illumination
• Manuscript
• Walters Art Museum
• Inhabited initial
• Ornament
• Devotion

Licenses

• Text

  These images and the content of Walters Art Museum W.87: Book of Hours are free of known copyright restrictions and in the public domain. See the Creative Commons Public Domain Mark page for usage details, http://creativecommons.org/publicdomain/mark/1.0/.

  URL

  http://creativecommons.org/publicdomain/mark/1.0/

• Text

  To the extent possible under law, The Walters Art Museum has waived all copyright and related or neighboring rights to this metadata about Walters Art Museum W.87: Book of Hours. This work is published from: United States. For a summary of CC0, see https://creativecommons.org/publicdomain/zero/1.0/. Legal code: https://creativecommons.org/publicdomain/zero/1.0/legalcode.

  URL

  https://creativecommons.org/publicdomain/zero/1.0/legalcode

Table of contents

• fol. 1r — Hours of the Virgin
• fol. 87r — Office of the Dead
• fol. 112v — Communion Prayer

Decorations

• fol. 64v — Marginalia with Image of the Holy Face
• fol. 65r — Marginalia with Pelican wounding chest to feed young with her blood