A young Saint in prayer, cut from a choirbook, illuminated manuscript on vellum [Paris, early 14th century]

A delicate initial from a known series illuminated by a Parisian artist in the ambit of Maître Honoré.

c.75 x 70mm, a cutting, the historiated initial 'D' with a young Saint in prayer as an angel descends from above, on a diaper ground, the reverse with two partial lines of text and music in square notation on a four-line red stave (rastrum c.20mm) with a red rubric for an antiphon: '[...]uasa sua [...]ovas. Ant.' (a little smudged, a few losses of pigment to the Saint's robe). Mounted and framed.

Provenance:
(1) Eugène Rodrigues (1853–1928), Parisian lawyer, connoisseur, and collector of early drawings: included as part of a group of illuminated manuscript cuttings in his anonymous sale (Catalogue d’une vente importante de dessins anciens: collection R.[...], de Paris, principalement des écoles des Pays-Bas et de l’Allemagne [...] miniatures sur velin, etc. (2 vols), 12 July 1921, lot 244, attributed to Maître Honoré. Two were resold at Helbing, Munich, 24–25 November, 1933, lots 86 & 87 (ill.); two others are now in the Barnes Collection, Philadelphia, one is at the Princeton Museum of Art, one is in the Zeileis collection, and one was sold at Sotheby's, 3 December, 2019, lot 1. On these miniatures, and other illuminations in the Rodrigues collection, see Peter Kidd's blog entry dated 11 January 2020 in Medieval Manuscripts Provenance, 'The Illuminated Cuttings and Leaves of Eugène Rodrigues (1853-1928)'.