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Yates Thompson MS 37

Record Id:

040-002355505

Hierarchy Root Ancestor Record Id:

032-002354332

MDARK:

ark:/81055/vdc_100000000827.0x000075

LARK:

SLARK:

Format:

ISAD(G)

Reference (shelfmark):

Yates Thompson MS 37

Title:

Book of Hours, Use of Bourges

Scope & Content:

Book of Hours, Use of Bourges, with a Parisian calendar (ff. 1r-12v). The text ends imperfectly, a rubric and a catchword have been erased on f. 198v.

Note of S. C. Cockerell comparing use to BL Harley 2952 (erased); Bibliothèque nationale, lat. 1151; BL Add. 32454 [book of hours of the 1st half of the 15th century] (4th flyleaf [f. ii recto]).

ff. 18r-v, 76v-78v, 101v-102v, 156r-158v are blank.

Decoration:

18 miniatures, accompanied by full pen rinceaux borders in red, blue and gold, with dragons; the first miniature with bas-de-page scene and borders with birds and butterflies (ff. 19r, 36v, 47v, 53v, 58r, 62r, 66r, 72r, 79r, 83v, 86r, 89r, 92r, 103r, 118v, 122r, 125v, 159r). All pages with partial pen rinceaux borders in red, blue and gold, with dragons. Large decorated initials, in colours and gold. 12 KL initials in colours and gold (ff. 1r-12r). Small initials and line-fillers in gold on red and blue grounds.

Collection Area:

Western Manuscripts

Project / Collection:

Yates Thompson Collection

Hierarchy Record Ids:

032-002354332
040-002355505

Is part of:

Yates Thompson MS 1-59 : Yates Thompson Manuscripts

Yates Thompson MS 37 : Book of Hours, Use of Bourges

Hierarchy:

032-002354332[0040]/040-002355505

Container:

View / search within Archive / Collection: Yates Thompson MS 1-59

Record Type (Level):

File

Extent:

1 volume

Digitised Content:

Languages:

French, Middle
Latin

Scripts:

Latin

Start Date:

1400

End Date:

1410

Date Range:

c 1405-1410

Era:

Access:

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User Conditions:

Letter of introduction required to view this manuscript.

Physical Characteristics:

Material: Parchment.

Dimensions: 190 x 140 mm (text space: 80 x 70 mm).

Foliation: ff. 198 (3 paper and 1 modern parchment flyleaves at the beginning, and 1 modern parchment and 3 paper flyleaves at the end).

Collation: i12 (ff. 1-12), ii6 (ff. 13-18), iii-ix8 (ff. 19-74), x4 (ff. 75-78), xi-xxv8 (ff. 79-198).

Script: Gothic.

Binding: Post-1600. British Museum in-house. Bound by Hayday in 1965; painted and gilt edges with decorate foliage and traces of erased coats of arms(?). Earlier binding now kept separately, described by Cockerell 1912.

Custodial History:

Origin:

Paris and Bourges.

Artist:

Attributed by Meiss 1967 to the Jacquemart workshop (f. 159r), Pseudo-Jacquemart (f. 19r), a follower of Pseudo-Jacquemart (ff. 36v, 47v, 83v, 103r, 125v), the Flemish Baptist Master workshop (f. 122r), the Luçon Master workshop / follower (ff. 53v, 58r, 62r / 66r, 72r), the Master of the Madonnas of Humility (ff. 79r, 86r, 89r, 92r) and the Trinity Master (f. 118v).

Provenance:

Image of the patron in prayer before the Virgin (f. 92r), a member of Jean de Berry's court (Meiss 1967) or Jean de Berry (b. 1340, d. 1416) himself (Cockerell 1912). According to Cockerell, the present manuscript could be the one described in the library inventory of Jean de Berry (see Léopold Delisle, Le Cabinet des Manuscrits de la Bibliothèque Nationale, 3 vols (Paris: Imprimérie Nationale, 1868-81), III, no. 110 p. 180, and Jules Guiffrey, Inventaires de Jean duc de Berry (1401-1416), 2 vols (Paris: Ernest Leroux, 1894-96), I, no. 1232 p. 330), as 'unes petites heures es quelles sont les heures de Nostre Dame, les sept psaumes, vigiles des morts et autres devocions, et au commencement a une oroison de saint Jehan Baptiste et le kalendrier, lesquelles monseigneur acheta a Paris en son hotel de Neelle, le 11 decembre 1415, 50 escus. Quoniam'. If so, the compiler of the inventory mistook the sequence of St. John's Gospel for a prayer to St. John Baptist and the word 'quoniam' has to be taken as the opening word of the second leaf of the Hours of Virgin. The inventory mentions that the book of hours was given to Jehan Gauchier, clerk of the Duke's jewels.

Debruge Duménil (d. 1838), French collector: in his collection (see Jules Labarte, Description des objets d'art qui composent la collection Debruge Duménil (Paris: Victor Didron, 1847), no. 643 pp. 543-44, fig. p. 541).

J. S. Burra of Bockhanger, Ashford, Kent: his sale, 15 December 1911, lot 481; bought for £550.0.0 by Quaritch for Mrs Yates Thompson.

Henry Yates Thompson (b. 1838, d. 1928), collector of illuminated manuscripts and newspaper proprietor: with his book-plate inscribed '[MS] cvi / A present / from / my Dear / Wife / 15 Dec 1911' (inside upper cover).

Bequeathed to the British Museum in 1941 by Mrs Henry Yates Thompson.

Publications:

A Descriptive Catalogue of Fourteen Illuminated Manuscripts (Nos. XCV to CVII and 79A) Completing the Hundred in the Library of Henry Yates Thompson (Cambridge: University Press, 1912), no. CVI pp. 141-45.

Illustrations from One Hundred Manuscripts in the Library of Henry Yates Thompson, 7 vols (London: Chiswick Press, 1907-18), III: Consisting of Sixty-Nine Plates Illustrating Ten MSS. of Various Countries from the IXth to the XVIth Centuries (1912), pp. 5-6, pls. XVI-XX.

Millard Meiss, Painting in Florence and Siena after the Black Death (Princeton: University Press, 1951), p. 142, fig. 150.

[D. H. Turner], Reproductions from Illuminated Manuscripts, Series 5 (London: British Museum, 1965), pl. 31.

Millard Meiss, French Painting in the Time of Jean de Berry: The Late XIV Century and the Patronage of the Duke, 2 vols, National Gallery of Art Kress Foundation Studies in the History of European Art, 2 (London: Thames and Hudson, 1967), pp. 195, 221, 227, 240, 276-77, 328-29, II, fig. 263-67, 269, 271, 272, 276.

Millard Meiss, with Kathleen Morand and Edith W. Kirsch, French Painting in the Time of Jean de Berry: The Boucicaut Master, National Gallery of Art Kress Foundation Studies in the History of European Art, 3 (London: Phaidon, 1968), p. 15.

Millard Meiss, French Painting in the Time of Jean de Berry: The Limbourgs and their Contemporaries, 2 vols (London: Phaidon Press, 1974), I, 360, 363, 393, 395-96, 414.

Janet Backhouse, Books of Hours (London: British Library, 1985), p. 36, fig. 34.

Janet Backhouse, The Illuminated Page: Ten Centuries of Manuscript Painting in the British Library (London: British Library, 1997), no. 128 p. 147.

Paris 1400: Les arts sous Charles VI (Paris: Réunion des musées nationaux, 2004), no. 170 [exhibition catalogue].

Janet Backhouse, Illumination from Books of Hours (London: British Library, 2004), pl. 129.

Gregory T. Clark, Art in a Time of War (Toronto: Pontifical Institute of Medieval Studies, 2016), pp. 362 n36, 363 n13.

Material Type:

Archives and Manuscripts

Legal Status:

Not Public Record(s)

Subjects:

Book of Hours

Places:

Bourges, France
Paris, France