Live Auction 20107Valuable Books and Manuscripts
Masters of the Delft Half-Length Figures (c.1460s-80s)
Lot 32 The following two lots are two miniatures from a Book of Hours illuminated by the Masters of the Delft Half-Length Figures (c.1460s-80s). The highly-decorative baldachin and delicate palette of soft greens, blues and rose, paralleled in a Book of Hours dated c.1480 in the Hague (Koninklijke Bibliotheek, Ms 131.G.8), which also deploys the elaborate architectural canopies, often hovering, unsupported, over the scenes. The elegant, soft oval faces and carefully modelled figures, however, are closer to those in an earlier Book of Hours at Keble College, Oxford (Ms 77), characterised as being by 'one of the more articulate of the group'; see The Golden Age of Dutch Manuscript Painting, Utrecht and New York, 1990, pp.194-7. The exceptional quality of the illumination may have been stimulated by an exceptional commission.

Masters of the Delft Half-Length Figures (c.1460s-80s)

The Harrowing of Hell, miniature on a leaf from a Book of Hours, illuminated manuscript on vellum [Delft, c.1470]

Closed15 December 2021

Price Realised

GBP 5,000

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Masters of the Delft Half-Length Figures (c.1460s-80s)
The Harrowing of Hell, miniature on a leaf from a Book of Hours, illuminated manuscript on vellum [Delft, c.1470]
A dramatic representation of the Harrowing of Hell by one of the Masters of the Delft Half-Length Figures, with Christ reaching into a dramatic Hellmouth for Adam and Eve while John the Baptist, still clad in his camel skin, waits his turn.

178 x 122mm. An inserted miniature removed from a Book of Hours, without text but likely opening the Office of the Dead (some marginal staining, not affecting miniature, inner margin cropped close to frame). Window mount. Provenance: (1) Sold with six sister leaves at Christie’s, 9 July 2001, lot 5. (2) Sotheby's, 5 July 2005, lot 26.