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Description
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PRESENTATION IN THE TEMPLE, miniature with full-page border on a leaf from the Chester Beatty Book of Hours dated 1408, in Latin, ILLUMINATED MANUSCRIPT ON VELLUM Paris, 1408 174 x 130mm. The miniature, on the verso, above an illuminated initial and five lines opening none from the Hours of the Virgin (priest's sleeve slightly rubbed, light water-damage to outer edges of border). Provenance: The leaf was originally f.48v in the Book of Hours dated 1408 by its Parisian scribe, the year the bridges of Paris were brought down by floods (f.158 with its colophon: Factum est anno mo ccco viijo quo ceciderunt pontes parisius was sold in these rooms, The Arcana Collection, Part I, 7 July 2010, lot 22). John Boycott Jarman (d.1864): his sale, Sotheby's 13 June 1864, lot 47; Edward Arnold: bought at the Jarman sale; Arnold's sale, Sotheby's 6 May 1929, lot 240; Sir Alfred Chester Beatty (1875-1968), his W MS. 103, purchased September 1929. Sir Alfred had most of the miniatures separately mounted, the present leaf sold Sotheby's, 22 March 1932, lot 324, to Maggs. A fine, and dated, example of the work of the Mazarine Master, a founding figure of the great age of Parisian manuscript illumination and a close associate of the Boucicaut Master, to whom the miniatures in this Book of Hours, and a slightly earlier Hours dated by the same scribe (Oxford, Bodleian Library, Ms.Douce 144), were originally attributed (for their reattribution see G. Bartz, Der Boucicaut-Meister, Heribert Tenschert, Katalog XLII, 1999, p.85; E. Taburet-Delahaye & F. Avril, Paris 1400, les arts sous Charles VI, 2004, p.297). The intact manuscript was damaged in the flood at Jarman's house in 1846: the present leaf is one of the least affected, and bears witness to the Mazarine Master's sensitivity and refinement.
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