A LEAF FROM THE HUNGERFORD HOURS, in Latin, [Lincolnshire, c.1340s]

A leaf from the Hungerford Hours, one of a small surviving group of splendid early English Books of Hours: few such manuscripts exist with a production date before the mid-14th century, and the group includes such fine examples as the de Brailes Hours, the Harley Hours, the Egerton Hours, and the Taymouth Hours. The Hungerford Hours is now dismembered and its leaves scattered: the present leaf has sisters in important private collections and institutions such as the British Library (Add. MSS. 62106, 61887 (six leaves) and 72707), Stanford University Libraries (Acc. 2010-159), and the Lilly Library, Indiana University.

Provenance:
The manuscript is named from the obits of Robert Hungerford, 2nd Baron Hungerford (c.1400-1459) and his wife Margaret in the calendar, but was perhaps produced for the marriage of Alice Pateshull and Sir Thomas Wake: the original owners are depicted on the leaf illustrating the Te Deum in Matins of the Virgin; several other leaves include coats of arms, argent a fess sable between three crescents of the same (the arms of the Pateshull family). These are faced, below the miniature of the Annunciation opening the Hours of the Virgin, with a second shield, now largely erased, but with traces of a bar gules (the arms of Sir Thomas Wake, argent, 2 bars gules, in chief 3 torteaux, are consistent with this partly erased shield). Alice Pateshull's will of 1398 bequeaths her Book of Hours to her daughter Sybil.

There does not seem to be any record for Sybil Wake after 1398: it seems plausible that the manuscript entered the Hungerford family via her sister Anne, whose grandson, Sir Philip de Courtenay, in 1426 married Elizabeth Hungerford (c.1408-1476), daughter of Walter Hungerford, 1st Baron Hungerford, and sister of Robert Hungerford, whose death is commemorated in the calendar. For a more detailed description of the history of the manuscript and its proposed re-dating, see C. de Hamel and S. Cooper, 'The Hungerford Hours', Tributes to Adelaide Bennett Hagens: Manuscripts, Iconography, and the Late Medieval Viewer, 2017, pp.355-369.

Physical description:
Visible area of leaf in double-sided frame: 140 x 100mm (5½ x 4 in.). 17 lines with 16 flourished initial alternately blue and gold and 14 illuminated line-fillers on the recto and 14 initials and line-fillers on the verso. This leaf, part of the Litany, follows directly from no 20 (containing the end of the Penitential Psalms and the beginning of the Litany) in C. de Hamel and S. Cooper's list of surviving leaves ('The Hungerford Hours', p.368).

[With:]

BORDER WITH MONKEYS, on a leaf from a Book of Hours, in Dutch, illuminated by the Monkey Master [Delft?, c.1480s]

A charming leaf with borders illuminated by the colourfully-named 'Monkey Master', an artist active in Delft who takes his name from the monkeys that scamper about amongst other drolleries in his margins. Often a collaborator of the Assumption Master, his style derives from artists such as the Master of Herman Droem and the Master of the Adair Hours. A small coherent group of Books of Hours is attributed to this artist: The Hague, KB, 135 K 40; 74 G 30; 133 H 16; Berlin, Kupferstichkabinett, MS 78 B3; Weert, BM 17.

Physical description:
182 x 130mm (7¼ x 5⅛ in.), ruled space: 95 x 66mm (3¾ x 2¾ in.), two music-making monkeys flanking an owl in the lower border and a dragon in the upper border on a leaf from a Book of Hours, the verso with 21 lines of text, a rubric, seven penwork initials, alternately red and blue, and a two-line blue initial with text-height penwork border in pink. The initial opens Compline of the Office of the Virgin in a Book of Hours in the Dutch translation of Geert Grote. Framed.

Please note this lot is the property of a private consignor.