‘Here Du Salst Myn Lippen Up Doen’
[BOOK OF HOURS.]
In Dutch. The Netherlands, c. 1475.
A complete vellum leaf (c. 140 x 96 mm, text area c. 115 x 80 mm), single columns of 20 lines written in brown ink in a good gothic script; recto with one ten-line initial ‘H’ (Here) in blue and red infilled with green branches, pink leaves and flowers, leafy pink penwork borders extending therefrom into the upper and inner margins, a gilt-framed border to lower and outer margins enclosing a long scroll bearing text entwined around a green branch on a blue and red ground, one three-line initial ‘K’ (Komet) in red with pink foliate infill; small initials in alternating red and blue, smaller capitals touched in red, rubrics; trimmed at head just touching the top of a flourish from the initial ‘H’, the blue ground to lower border mostly rubbed away, small smudge to one initial to verso; overall very well preserved.
A very attractive leaf from a small Dutch Book of Hours with the opening of the Hours of the Virgin, with an initial ‘H’ of beautiful execution and with a trompe-l’oeil border.
The delicate foliate and floral design in the body of the ‘H’, in shades of green and pink, is extremely well done, the curling green branches being echoed in the attractive border, in which a long white scroll bearing a prayer (‘O almechtige gudertijrne verlozer ...’) winds its way around a branch in an appealing trompe-l’oeil design. In the parent manuscript, this leaf would likely have followed a miniature of the Annunciation.