|
|
|
|
|
|
Detailed record for Harley 6563
|
|
|
|
| Title |
Book of Hours (fragmentary) |
| Origin |
England, S. E. (London) |
| Date |
c. 1320 - c. 1330 |
| Language |
Latin |
| Script |
Gothic |
| Artists |
Close to certain works of the Milemete group (see Sandler 1986). |
| Decoration |
All pages with partial foliate borders including animals, grotesques, and heraldic decoration (a coat of arms appears on every page), with figures, animals or small scenes in the lower margins, in colours. All folios containing large historiated initials excised. Small initials (2 lines) in gold on red and blue grounds. Small initials (1 line) in gold with red or purple pen-flourishing or in blue with red pen-flourishing. Line fillers in gold on red and blue grounds. |
| Dimensions in mm |
160 x 105 (80 x 55) |
| Official foliation |
ff. 110 (+ 10 paper flyleaves at the beginning and 8 at the end) |
| Form |
Parchment codex |
| Binding |
Post-1600. Gold-tooled red leather; green inlays; rebacked. |
| Provenance |
The Harley Collection, formed by Robert Harley (b. 1661, d. 1724), 1st earl of Oxford and Mortimer, politician, and Edward Harley (b. 1689, d. 1741), 2nd earl of Oxford and Mortimer, book collector and patron of the arts. Edward Harley bequeathed the library to his widow, Henrietta Cavendish, née Holles (b. 1694, d. 1755) during her lifetime and thereafter to their daughter, Margaret Cavendish Bentinck (b. 1715, d.1785), duchess of Portland; the manuscripts were sold by the Countess and the Duchess in 1753 to the nation for £10,000 (a fraction of their contemporary value) under the Act of Parliament that also established the British Museum; the Harley manuscripts form one of the foundation collections of the British Library. |
| Notes |
A fragmentary volume from which about half the folios are lost, the book now begins with the second lesson of Matins of the Hours of the Virgin; in addition it contains portions of the Hours of the Holy Spirit, the Litany, the Office of the Dead, etc. (see Sandler 1986).
Pin-pricks were used on many folios to transfer a design from one side to the other (see Sandler 1986 and Alexander 1992). |
| Select bibliography |
A Catalogue of the Harleian Manuscripts in the British Museum, 4 vols (London: [n. pub.], 1808-12), III, no. 6563.
Walter de Gray Birch and Henry Jenner, Early Drawings and Illuminations: An Introduction to the Study of Illustrated Manuscripts (London: Bagster and Sons, 1879), p. 8.
Eric. G. Millar, English Illuminated Manuscripts of the XIVth and XVth Century (Paris: Van Oest, 1928), p. 85.
Lucy Freeman Sandler, Gothic Manuscripts 1285-1385, Survey of Manuscripts Illuminated in the British Isles, 2 vols (London: Harvey Miller, 1986), I, figs. 230-233, II, no. 89.
Jonathan J. G. Alexander, Medieval Illuminators and their Methods of Work (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1992), p. 162 n. 94.
John A. Goodall, 'Heraldry in the Decoration of English Medieval Manuscripts', Antiquaries Journal, 77 (1997), 179-220 (188, 193-206).
John Higgitt, The Murthly Hours: Devotion, Literacy and Luxury in Paris, England and the Gaelic West (London: British Library, 2000), p. 188 n. 23.
Nigel Morgan, 'Patrons and Devotional Images in English Art of the International Gothic c. 1350-1450', in Reading Texts and Images: Essays on Medieval and Renaissance Art and Patronage in honour of Margaret M. Manion, ed. by Bernard J. Muir (Exeter: University of Exeter Press, 2002), pp. 93-122. |
|
|
|
|
|
|
| |
f. 7
Grotesque |
f. 7v
Grotesque |
f. 10
Grotesque |
| |
f. 13
Grotesques |
f. 40
Cat playing a fiddle |
f. 40
Cat playing a fiddle |
| |
f. 41
Boar |
ff. 43v-44
Grotesques |
f. 49v
Owl |
| |
ff. 67v-68
Grotesques |
f. 68v
Blacksmith at work |
ff. 71v-72
Grotesques |
| |
f. 71v
Mouse |
f. 72
Cat in a tower |
ff. 72v-73
Grotesques |
| |
ff. 73v-74
Grotesques |
ff. 74v-75
Grotesques |
ff. 95v-96
Grotesques |
| |
|
|
|
|
