summary
Miniature for book of hours
leaf dimensions : height (mm)
140
leaf dimensions : width (mm)
95
note (deco)
King David in profile kneeling in prayer on a crenellated terrace outside a gothic tower, a view of a street scene beyond including a woman carrying two jugs (probably in allusion to Bathsheba’s bathing, II Samuel 11: 2) and a man riding away on a white horse (probably Uriah the Hittite returning to Joab carrying the letter which ensures that Uriah will be killed in battle, ibid, 14–15), God appearing in the sky with the arrows of vengeance; within a full border subdivided into compartments by rustic branches including vignettes in the apertures of a couple in a boat, a merman in armour fighting a mermaid, and two ducks, other compartments including a daisy and a rose on coloured grounds; rather rubbed; recto blank.
origPlace : proposed origin
Bruges
note (history)
The stems are painted in trompe l’oeil as if three dimensional and floating just above the coloured grounds, on which they are casting shadows, characteristic of the so-called ‘Ghent-Bruges’ style of the end of the fifteenth and especially early sixteenth century. The painter has plucked stock patterns from repertoires familiar to the Master of the Older Prayerbook of Maximilian I, presumed to be Alexander Bening (d. 1519), his son, Simon Bening (1483–1561), and other Bruges illuminators in their circle. Full-page composition on the verso within a border 115 mm. by 79 mm., a central miniature in a gently arched compartment 80 mm. by 45 mm.There is a second leaf from the same manuscript Book of Hours in the Lilly Library, Ricketts D: 6.
provenance
C. L. Ricketts; acquired by the Lilly Library with the Ricketts Collection in 1961.
note (temp)
http://ds.lib.berkeley.edu/RickettsD5_40
