Walters Ms. W.85, Book of Hours (incomplete)

W.85

Book of Hours (incomplete)

Book of Hours

This fragmentary Book of Hours was created in Ghent ca. 1300 for the use of a woman with Dominican ties. Although quite a bit of text and imagery is missing, including the calendar and Office of the Dead, this tiny manuscript is lavishly decorated on nearly every page with marginal drolleries and grotesques, making it a rich and charming book even in its fragmentary state.

First decade of the 14th century CE

Ghent

Book

Devotional

The primary language in this manuscript is Latin.

Parchment

Thin parchment, very well selected and prepared

Foliation: i+116+i

Modern pencil foliation, upper right corners, rectos

Formula: Undetermined due to tight binding

Catchwords: None

Signatures: None

Comments:

4.7 cm wide by 6.8 cm high

2.1 cm wide by 3.0 cm high

1. Columns: 1
2. Ruled lines: 9
3. Ruled in brown ink

fols. 1r - 116v:

1. Title: Book of Hours
2. Contents: Incomplete and misbound
3. Hand note: Textura quadrata
4. Decoration note: Many illuminated pages missing; two large historiated initials extant (6 lines); twenty-four smaller historiated initials (3-4 lines); decorated initials begin some major texts (4 lines); decorated and inhabited initials, including animals and human faces, found at secondary text openings throughout (2 lines); pages heavily populated with drolleries and grotesques throughout; geometric line fillers in gold, blue, and red; text in black ink

fols. 1r - 68v:

1. Title: Hours of the Virgin
2. Incipit: Letatus sum in hiis
3. Contents: Hours are for Dominican use; incomplete and misbound, beginning partway through Prime; texts can be reconstructed as follows: Matins missing; fols. 7-22, 3-4, and 5-6: Lauds; fols. 1-2: Prime; fols. 26-31 and 23-25: Terce; Sext missing; fols. 32-41: None; fols. 42-58: Vespers; fols. 59-68: Compline
4. Decoration note: Two large historiated initials, fols. 32r and 42r; nineteen small historiated initials, fols. 1r, 5v, 6v, 16r, 18v, 20v, 21r, 23r, 25v, 26r, 27v, 30r, 37v, 40v, 42v, 44v, 46v, 49r, and 51r

fols. 69r - 102v:

1. Title: Seven penitential psalms
2. Incipit: ...tu domine usquequo
3. Contents: Incomplete; first psalm begins imperfectly
4. Decoration note: Five historiated initials, fols. 71r, 75r, 87v, 96v, and 98v

fols. 103r - 116v:

1. Title: Litany, petitions, and collects
2. Incipit: Kyrieleyson
3. Contents: Saints in litany favor Dominican order; fols. 103r-107r: Litany, which includes thirteen disciples from Peter to Barnabas; eleven martyrs, which include Thomas Becket and Peter martyr; twelve confessors, including Dominic, Francis, Jerome, Benedict, and Anthony; eight virgins, including Mary Magdalene, Felicitas, and Catherine; fols. 107v-115r: Petitions; fols. 115r-116v: Three collects, the second of which invokes St. Dominic

fol. 1r:

1. 
2. Title: Initial "L" with Balaam riding a donkey
3. Form: Historiated initial "L," 4 lines
4. Text: Hours of the Virgin: Prime

fol. 5v:

1. 
2. Title: Initial "T" with Paul being beheaded
3. Form: Historiated initial "T," 4 lines
4. Text: Hours of the Virgin: Lauds

fol. 6v:

1. 
2. Title: Initial "D" with the martyrdom of Stephen
3. Form: Historiated initial "D," 4 lines
4. Text: Hours of the Virgin: Lauds

fol. 16r:

1. 
2. Title: Initial "C" with Christ blessing
3. Form: Historiated initial "C," 3 lines
4. Text: Hours of the Virgin: Lauds

fol. 18v:

1. 
2. Title: Initial "L" with Christ enthroned holding globe
3. Form: Historiated initial "L," 4 lines
4. Text: Hours of the Virgin: Lauds

fol. 20v:

1. 
2. Title: Initial "E" with King David blessing
3. Form: Historiated initial "E," 4 lines
4. Text: Hours of the Virgin: Lauds

fol. 21r:

1. 
2. Title: Initial "O" with woman standing among trees
3. Form: Historiated initial "O," 4 lines
4. Text: Hours of the Virgin: Lauds

fol. 23r:

1. 
2. Title: Initial "E" with seated woman holding book
3. Form: Historiated initial "E," 4 lines
4. Text: Hours of the Virgin: Terce

fol. 25v:

1. 
2. Title: Initial "C" with an apostle holding a scroll
3. Form: Historiated initial "C," 4 lines
4. Text: Hours of the Virgin: Terce

fol. 26r:

1. 
2. Title: Initial "A" with a king's bust
3. Form: Historiated initial "A," 4 lines
4. Text: Hours of the Virgin: Terce

fol. 27v:

1. 
2. Title: Initial "N" with the Evangelist Mark
3. Form: Historiated initial "N," 4 lines
4. Text: Hours of the Virgin: Terce

fol. 30r:

1. 
2. Title: Initial "Q" with a Dominican monk writing on a scroll
3. Form: Historiated initial "Q," 4 lines
4. Text: Hours of the Virgin: Terce

fol. 32r:

1. 
2. Title: Initial "D" with Crucifixion and kneeling female patron
3. Form: Historiated initial "D," 6 lines
4. Text: Hours of the Virgin: None

fol. 37v:

1. 
2. Title: Initial "D" with St. Catherine of Alexandria and a kneeling knight below
3. Form: Historiated initial "D," 4 lines
4. Text: Hours of the Virgin: None

fol. 40v:

1. 
2. Title: Initial "F" with Samson wrestling a lion
3. Form: Historiated initial "F," 4 lines
4. Text: Hours of the Virgin: None

fol. 42r:

1. 
2. Title: Initial "D" with the anointing of Christ's body before entombment
3. Form: Historiated initial "D," 6 lines
4. Text: Hours of the Virgin: Vespers

fol. 42v:

1. 
2. Title: Initial "D" with John the Baptist
3. Form: Historiated initial "D," 4 lines
4. Text: Hours of the Virgin: Vespers

fol. 44v:

1. 
2. Title: Initial "L" with St. Martin dividing his cloak
3. Form: Historiated initial "L," 4 lines
4. Text: Hours of the Virgin: Vespers

fol. 46v:

1. 
2. Title: Initial "B" with an apostle (?) carrying a white book and cross
3. Form: Historiated initial "B," 4 lines
4. Text: Hours of the Virgin: Vespers
5. Comment:

   Note: the initial "B" here is a mistake; this is Psalm 121 and should begin with an "L" for "Letatus."

fol. 49r:

1. 
2. Title: Initial "N" with a seated scribe writing on a scroll
3. Form: Historiated initial "N," 4 lines
4. Text: Hours of the Virgin: None

fol. 51r:

1. 
2. Title: Initial "L" with John the Evangelist
3. Form: Historiated initial "L," 4 lines
4. Text: Hours of the Virgin: None

fol. 71r:

1. 
2. Title: Initial "B" with King David kneeling in prayer at an altar
3. Form: Historiated initial "B," 4 lines
4. Text: Seven penitential psalms

fol. 75r:

1. 
2. Title: Initial "D" with a seated man
3. Form: Historiated initial "D," 4 lines
4. Text: Seven penitential psalms

fol. 87v:

1. 
2. Title: Initial "D" with Mary Magdalene holding an ointment jar
3. Form: Historiated initial "D," 4 lines
4. Text: Seven penitential psalms

fol. 96v:

1. 
2. Title: Initial "D" with the martyrdom of the apostle Peter
3. Form: Historiated initial "D," 4 lines
4. Text: Seven penitential psalms

fol. 98v:

1. 
2. Title: Initial "D" with the martyrdom of John the Evangelist
3. Form: Historiated initial "D," 4 lines
4. Text: Seven penitential psalms

The binding is not original.

French green velvet binding, now mostly worn away, late nineteenth or early twentieth century, and likely by Léon Gruel; boards are thin pasteboard; tightly sewn, with white and green silk endbands; edges gilt; traces of fastener visible in middle of fore-edge on both boards

Created ca. 1300-10 for Dominican use; style suggests Ghent; kneeling figure of woman before Crucifixion image on fol. 32r suggests a female patron; Flemish origin supported by arms of Flanders, in banner hanging from trumpet fol. 15v, and on shield fol. 116r

Léon Gruel and Robert Engelmann collection, Paris, late nineteenth-early twentieth century, no. 92; their bookplate on front pastedown

Henry Walters, Baltimore, purchased from Gruel in 1903

Walters Art Museum, 1931, by Henry Walters' bequest

De Ricci, Seymour, and W. J. Wilson. Census of Medieval and Renaissance Manuscripts in the United States and Canada. Vol. 1. New York: H. W. Wilson Company, 1935; p. 782, cat. no. 160.

Miner, D. Illuminated Books of the Middle Ages and Renaissance: An Exhibition Held at the Baltimore Museum of Art. Baltimore: Trustees of the Walters Art Gallery, 1949; cat. no. 49, pl. XXXI.

Randall, Lilian M.C. Images in the Margins of Gothic Manuscripts. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1966; p. 38 and passim.

Diringer, David. The Illuminated Book: Its History and Production. London: Faber and Faber, 1967; p. 436, pl. VII-28.

Lane, Barbara Greenhouse. The Development of the Medieval Devotional Figure. Ph.D. dissertation, University of Pennsylvania, 1971, pp.174-5, fig. 196.

Wentersdorf, K.P. "The Symbolic Significance of Figurae Scatologicae in Gothic Manuscripts." In Word, Picture, and Spectacle, edited by C. Davidson, 1-19. Kalamazoo, Michigan: Medieval Institute Publications of Western Michigan University, 1984; p. 2, fig. 3.

Owens, M.B. "Musical Subjects in the Illumination of Books of Hours from Fifteenth-Century France and Flanders." Ph.D. diss, University of Chicago, 1987: p. 365.

London, Sotheby's, 21 June 1988. Referenced under lot 73.

Wieck, Roger S., L.R. Poos, V. Reinburg, and J. Plummer. Time Sanctified: The Book of Hours in Medieval Art and Life, exhibition catalogue of the Walters Art Gallery. New York: George Braziller, 1988; pp. 69, 71, 207, cat. no. 78, fig. 49.

London, Sotheby's, 18 June, 1991. Referenced under lot 155.

Lewis, Suzanne. Beyond the Frame: Marginal Figures and Historiated Initials in the Getty Apocalypse. The J. Paul Getty Museum Journal 20 (1992): 53-76; p. 75-76 (n. 16 for p. 63).

Epstein, Marc Michael. Dreams of Subversion in Medieval Jewish Art and Literature. University Park: The Pennsylvania State University Press, 1997; p. 128.

Hunt, Elizabeth Moore. Illuminating the Border of French and Flemish Manuscripts, 1270–1310. London: Routledge, 2006; pp. 189, 195.

Wirth, Jean,and Isabelle Engammare. Les marges à drôleries des manuscrits gothiques, 1250-1350. Geneva: Librairie Droz, 2008; p. 344.

Leo, Dominic. Images, Texts, and Marginalia in a "Vows of the Peacock" Manuscript (New York, Pierpont Morgan Library MS G24). Leiden, Netherlands: Brill Publishers, 2013; p. 344.

Principal cataloger: Randall, Lilian M.C.

Cataloger: Herbert, Lynley

Editor: Herbert, Lynley

Copy editor: Dibble, Charles

Conservators: Owen, Linda; Quandt, Abigail

Contributors: Emery, Doug; Noel, William; Schuele, Allyson; Tabritha, Ariel; Toth, Michael B.; Valle, Chiara; Wiegand, Kimber

The Walters Art Museum

Licensed for use under Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported Access Rights, http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/legalcode. It is requested that copies of any published articles based on the information in this data set be sent to the curator of manuscripts, The Walters Art Museum, 600 North Charles Street, Baltimore MD 21201.