Book of Hours. Use of Rome.

[Horæ] Ad vsum Romane curie.

Paris, Philippe Pigouchet for Enguilbert, Jean and Geoffroy de Marnef c. 1491/2.

4to (191 x 132 mm.). 92 leaves. Bâtarde type for the text, rounded Gothic type for the border strip captions, 25 text lines per page, two-line initials and majuscules rubricated in blue (rubrication in the first two quires in light gray wash), manuscript guide letters, a woodcut Pigouchet device on the final verso (Renouard, Marques 919), a woodcut Marnef device on the title (Renouard 710). AN ICONOGRAPHIC TOUR DE FORCE. NEARLY EVERY ILLUSTRATION IS BY THE MASTER OF THE GRANDES HEURES: Nineteen nearly full-page metalcuts from two different series. TEN OF THESE CUTS ARE TYPOLOGICAL AND FIRST APPEAR HERE (109/10 x 74/5 mm.). Thirty-two text woodcuts of saints from a single series (38 x 26 mm.; a thirty-third cut is by a different artist). A full-page Anatomical Man (102 x 77 mm.). Five series of narrative and decorative metal- and woodcut border strips (22 mm. and 9 mm. wide), of which one or another frames every page. Most have letterpress captions.

19th-century blind-tooled polished brown sheep (rubbed), gilt-lettered spine title and date, ORIGINAL 15TH-CENTURY VELLUM FLYLEAVES AND PASTEDOWNS, all edges gilt.

           THIS BOOK OF HOURS INTRODUCES A UNIQUE SUITE OF TEN TYPOLOGICAL ILLUSTRATIONS. The main New Testament scene above is paired with two parallel Old Testament scenes below, in the manner of Bibliæ Pauperum. Pigouchet only used this series of distinctively medieval cuts in this edition.
            These innovative blocks announce the eight canonical Hours of the Virgin as well as the abbreviated liturgy of the Hours of the Cross and of the Holy Spirit. Nine illustrations have the Hour’s name cut into the central frame (Ad Lavdes, Ad Prima, etc.), and each has a cartouche at the bottom for the liturgical incipit in type. This series also has five single scene cuts (Martyrdom of St. John, Betrayal, Stem of Jesse, Three Living and Three Dead), complemented by four cuts from a related series (Penitential David, Rich Man and Lazarus, Trinity and Mass of St. Gregory).
            Our border strips depict Creation, the Life of Christ, the Saints and the Sibyls. The outer and lower pieces of each set have an alphabetic “signature” to help compositors keep them paired.
            Pigouchet apparently owned the borders but not the other illustrative material. After their debut here, the typological cuts appear in at least nine other Parisian incunable Hours involving ten different printers and publishers. After 1501, these illustrations were abandoned in favor of those in the more fashionable German-inflected Renaissance style.
            The contemporary manuscript note on our front flyleaf discusses Golden Numbers and takes the year 1491 for its calculation example, suggesting that as the year of publication. This Book of Hours stands at the very start of PIGOUCHET’S DOMINATION OF THE INTERNATIONAL MARKET FOR PRINTED HORÆ: from 1491 to 1512, he produced some 170 editions.
           Of this Book of Hours, there is a single complete copy in U.S. libraries (Morgan). In good condition (small stain in the lower inner corners of the first three quires, scattered marginal spots, one blank margin repaired), an early reader “dressed” two nude border figures with brown ink.
            On the recto of the front flyleaf, a contemporary owner penned a fourteen-line Latin prayer for virtue and strength. On the verso, they added a six-line contents list, the Golden Numbers explanation and AN ITALIAN VERNACULAR MNEMONIC FORMULA TO DETERMINE THE PHASE OF THE MOON. From the library of Henry Huth (1815-78; Catalogue (1913) 3819) and of Catalonian collector Léon Parcé (1894-1979).
¶Tenschert, Horae B.V.M. 1.1 (this edition) & see III: 1304-9 (Nickel’s discussion of typological cuts in “Varia Horarum”) & IV: 1408-12 (another typological cut discussion) & IX: 3951-61 (an analysis of important Horæ illustration series); Bohatta, Katalog der liturgischen Drucke…in der herzogl. Parma’schen Bibliothek 248 (-12 ff., now at the Braidense in Milan); Bohatta, Bibliographie der Livres d’heures 505; GW 13145; ISTC ih00359000; Goff H-359; see Davies’ Catalogue of…Early French Books in the Library of C. Fairfax Murray 262 “this remarkable series of cuts” (the typological cuts in the 1492 edition Jean Morand printed for the Marnef) and Pollard’s “The Illustrations in French Books of Hours. 1486-1500” in Bibliographica III (1897): 461-70 “The history of the remaining editions of Horae printed at Paris before 1500 may be the more easily told because almost all of them had some relation with those of Pigouchet”.

Item #12501

Price: $65,000.00

Status: On Hold