Description:
Beautiful example of a page from a typical Book of Hours from the Hardouyn workshop. Typical ruling in red, completely unnecessary to the printer but a feature that readers of manuscripts were so accustomed to that it was brefiely used in printed works. Both sides predominantly made of a metalcuts, identifiable from the criblée (heavily inked areas broken up with a network of dots). The recto (wider margin on the right) is composed of a typical mismatched set of illustrations. In the top right corner of the margin is a woman kneeling before several men, one enthroned. below this is a hunt scene that was frequently used in probably every Book of Hours produced by the workshop. It could be both decorative (as it is here) or paired with other blocks or text to illustrate the story of St. Eustace. The bás-de-page contains a woman stepping on a serpent holding a lantern, an allegory of virtue paired with a man either making a pagan sacrifice or committing suicide with the devil at his back, probably an allegory of vice. In the lower left corner is a woodblock, which looks awkward on a page so packed with dark metalcuts. The rest of the left hand margin is built up of two commonly used blocks with the typical marginalia beasts.
On the verso, again going clockwise, the inner margins contain more blocks with hunting scenes and in the lower right corner is a woodblock that careless type-setter placed upside down. On the bottom are two blocks again separted by two decorative blocks. One is a woman holding a cross and the other is a woman escorted by a devil with a ram (meant as a pair with the block on the recto of a man and devil?). On the bottom left is a St. Margaret coming out of the dragon and then St. Sebastian shot through with arrows. A block of text in latin, two words (I can't make it out) and then Susannah in her bath spied on by two men in the bushes to the left. Another block of text "Sancte laureti" below a scene from the martyrdom of St. Laurentius being burned on a gridiron.
Tags:
text; writing; virgins; hunting; women Link to share this object record:
https://museums.fivecolleges.edu/detail.php?t=objects&type=ext&id_number=MH+1986.37.20 |
