Beinecke MS 287               Flanders, s. XV^^ex
Hours, use of Rome

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1. f. 1r blank; ff. 1v-13r Calendar; among the entries, Eucherius
(20 Feb.), Resurrectio domini (27 March), Macarius (8 April), Desiderius
(23 May), Transfiguration (6 Aug., in red), Bavo and Remigius (1 Oct., in red),
Donatianus (14 Oct., in red), Hubert (3 Nov.).  f. 13v blank

2. ff. 14r-15v Oratio deuota ad ymaginem ihesu christi. et incipit.
Salue sancta facies nostri redemptoris...[HE 174-75].

3. ff. 16r-23v Short Hours of the Cross.

4. f. 24r-v Oratio deuota de dolorosa et mestissima uirgine maria.
Gratias tibi ago domine ihesu christe qui a fideli discipulo tuo....

5. ff. 25r-31v Short Hours of the Holy Spirit.

6. ff. 32r-37v Mass of the Virgin Mary.  Introit:  Salue sancta
parens....

7. ff. 38r-45r Sequences of the Gospels.  f. 45v ruled, but blank

8. ff. 46r-133v Hours of the Virgin, use of Rome; the Advent Office
begins on f. 124r.

9. ff. 134r-159v Penitential Psalms and Litany.

10. ff. 160r-213v Office of the Dead, use of Rome.

     Parchment (extremely fine), ff. vi (paper) + i (contemporary parchment,
foliated vi) + 213 + v (paper), 114 x 84 (61 x 46) mm., trimmed.
Calendar written in 16 long lines, text in 14, ruled in pale red ink; single
bounding lines.  Folios 211-13 show traces of a format different from the one
used in the rest of the manuscript (97 x 71 mm. for the decorative frames
as compared to approx. 101 x 76 mm. elsewhere in the manuscript).
Unfoliated paper leaves (s. xix?), some loose and torn, bound in before
miniatures for protection.
     The binding is too tight to permit accurate collation.
     Written in round gothic script by one scribe.
     Miniatures, borders, and initials of very high quality, executed by an
artist of the Ghent-Bruges school, identified by O. Paecht as the Master
of the David Scenes in the "Grimani Breviary" (Venice, Bibl. Naz., Marciana
MS lat. I. 99 [2138]); to the same Master he attributes [unpublished note in the
library files] Oxford, Bod. Lib. Douce 112 (Paecht and Alexander, v. 1, no.
396) and Douce 256 (Paecht and Alexander, v. 1, no. 397).  T. Kren
("A Book of Hours in the Beinecke Library [MS 287] and an Atelier from the
Ghent-Bruges School," unpublished M.A. Thesis, Yale University, 1974;
Renaissance Painting in Manuscripts, exhib. cat., J. Paul Getty Museum,
1983, pp. 59-62, no. 7, with figs 7d and 7f of ff. 40r, 5v) has identified the
following manuscripts from the same shop:
Baltimore, Walters Art Gallery, MSS 427 and 428; Detroit, Institute of Arts,
Acc. no. 63.146; London, B. L. Add. MS 18852; Oxford. Bod. Lib., MSS Douce
8 and 12; Paris, B. N. MS lat. 10555; San Marino, Huntington Library HM
1174; Vatican City, Biblioteca Apostolica Vaticana, Vat. lat. 10293; Venice,
Museo Correr, MS V.4; Vienna, Oest. Nat., Cod. 2032; and Washington, D.C.,
Library of Congress, MS 13.  To this group, R. Wieck, Late Medieval and
Renaissance Illuminated Manuscripts 1350-1525 in the Houghton Library
(Cambridge, Mass., 1983) pp. 58-59, no. 28, has added Cambridge, Mass.,
Harvard University, Houghton Lib., MS Richardson 8.
     In the calendar, 24 miniatures, painted so that the written space appears to
be superimposed on a full-page picture; the sign of the zodiac for each month is
set in a small gold or grey oval above the second page for each month.  For
January, the scenes are a man and a wife at home and men playing on ice (ff. 1v
and 2r); for February, men cutting wood and taking it to town (ff. 2v and 3r);
for March, planting and mending (ff. 3v and 4r); for April, tending sheep
(ff. 4v and 5r); for May, a boating expedition and preparing for the hunt
(ff. 5v and 6r); for June, picnics and haymaking (ff. 6v and 7r); for July,
harvest (ff. 7v and 8r); for August, threshing (ff. 8v and 9r); for September,
gathering and pressing grapes (ff. 9v and 10r); for October, autumn plowing
sowing (ff. 10v and 11r); for November, cattle being taken to market
and about to be slaughtered (ff. 11v and 12r); for December,
slaughtering, buying and selling in the
marketplace (ff. 12v and 13r).  Each calendar page enclosed in a gold and brown
frame.
     Six miniatures with full borders, in frames as above:  f. 16r (Hours of
the Cross), Betrayal of Christ, with border of scenes from the Passion of
Christ; f. 38r (John), John on Patmos, border of Gothic architectural elements;
f. 40r (Luke), Luke writing, scatter border of flowers on gold ground; f. 42r
(Matthew), Matthew writing, border of architectural elements; f. 44r (Mark),
Mark writing, scatter border of flowers on gold ground; f. 46r (Hours of the
Virgin, Matins), Adam and Eve tempted by the Serpent, border, Tree of Jesse.
The manuscript almost certainly contained 16 more full-page miniatures following
ff. 13, 15, 23, 24, 31, 45, 69, 83, 89, 95, 101, 107, 117, 123, 133, and 159
(see below).  Twelve illuminated initials, 5-line, letters formed of curling
acanthus on pink and/or blue, brown and green, or blue and green grounds;
borders of flowers or architectural elements, as above.  The style of the
borders on ff. 14r and 32r (putti, garlands, and other Renaissance motifs)
differs from that in the rest of the manuscript, but according to J. Marrow
is not later, since virtually identical borders occur in a similar Hours:
Brussels, Bibl. Roy. IV. 237 (cf. G. Dogaer, "Een Brugs getijdenboek van
omstreeks 1500 met Italiaase inslag," Hellinga Festschrift:  Forty-Three
Studies in Bibliography Presented to Dr. Wytze Hellinga [Amsterdam, 1980] pp.
151-57).  Border decoration on every page without a full border:  one bird,
flower, grotesque, piece of jewelry, insect, or, occasionally, a household
utensil, in
each of the three outer margins, traced and painted on the following verso.
2- and 1-line initials in the same style as 5-line initials, with blue or pink
grounds.  Ribbon line fillers in the same style.  Rubrication in pale crimson:
in calendar, for months, dates, and important feasts.
     Seventeen full-page miniatures formerly in the manuscript have been
identified as modern additions painted by Caleb Wing, and are now bound
separately as MS 287A.  (J. Backhouse, "A Victorian Connoisseur and his
Manuscripts:  The Tale of Mr. Jarman and Mr. Wing,"  The British Museum
Quarterly 32 [1967-68] pp. 83, 88, 92.)  Stubs in MS 287 indicate that Wing's
miniatures replaced 16, perhaps 17 lost originals.  Wing appears to have
inserted two miniatures after f. 69 (MS 287A, ff. 3, 4); in the original there
was probably only one.
     Water has caused ink to run in the upper left of f. 151r; no loss of text.
     Binding:  s. xix [?].  Gilt, gauffered edges.  Previously bound in brick
colored velvet, over wooden boards; remains of velvet on turn-ins.
An elaborate clasp with round blue sapphire and the initials
"V. M." joined by a love knot on the inner side.  Rebacked.

Written in Bruges or Ghent (as indicated by the Saints in the calendar
and by the decoration) at the end of the 15th century.  Early modern
provenance unknown.  The initials "V. M." on the clasp and the Maarbeck arms
(gules, a goose argent, beaked and membered or, an orle or) on the border of f.
32r are probably later additions (s. xix?).  Catalogue of John Boykett Jarman
(Sotheby's, 13 June 1864, no. 72); purchased by Boone, 1864 (note on first front
flyleaf).  Bookplate of Henry Hucks Gibbs, Baron Aldenham (1819-1907; H. H.
Gibbs, A Catalogue of Some Printed Books and Manuscripts at St. Dunstan's,
Regent's Park, and Aldenham House, Herts [London, 1888] p. 84).  Sold by his
descendants (Sotheby's, 23 March 1937, no. 175); purchased by W. H. Robinson and
Sons. Unidentified "Church Congress Exhibition" label with handwritten "196"
glued to verso of first flyleaf; similar label also appears on San Marino,
Huntington Library MS HM 35300, which was owned by the church of St. James
in Bury St. Edmunds from the year of its foundation 1595, until the sale of
that library in 1971.
Acquired from Dudley M. Colman, through C. A. Stonehill, by Louis M.
Rabinowitz in 1954.  Purchased from Hannah D. Rabinowitz through C. A.
Stonehill's in 1960.

Bibliography:  Faye and Bond, p. 50, no. 287.
Exhibition Catalogue, pp. 261-262, no. 78, pl. 29 of f. 46r.
     T. Kren, "A Book of Hours in the Beinecke Library and an Atelier from the
Ghent-Bruges School" (M.A. Thesis, Yale University, 1974).
     S. Hindman and J. D. Farquhar, Pen to Press:  Illustrated Manuscripts
and Printed Books in the First Century of Printing ([n.p.], 1977), p. 153,
n. 140.


Barbara A. Shailor