“Heures a lusaige de Romme tout au long sans riens requerir avec les figures de la pocalipse”
HORAE, use of Rome, in Latin and French.
Paris: Guillaume Anabat for Gilles and Germain Hardouin, not dated [about 1506].
We are offering a very rare Book of Hours printed on vellum containing 16 large and 34 smaller metalcuts and hundreds of initials which have all been splendidly illuminated by a contemporary hand.
We are presenting here an extremely rare original Book of Hours in Latin and French for the use of Rome, printed on vellum.
The beautiful work contains 15 (of 16) large metalcuts, a metalcut anatomical skeleton, a full-page publisher's device as well as 33 small cuts. The large cuts are designed within an architectural frame, all other pages with a composite metalcut ornamental and historiated border.
All large and small cuts as well as the borders of the 13 calendar pages at the beginning have been illuminated by a contemporary hand in splendid colours and liquid gold. These illuminations have been carried out in an artistic quality almost like fine medieval miniature paintings.
Most pages are decorated by beautiful initials, paragraph marks and line-filler painted in liquid gold on alternate pink or blue ground, ruled in red.
The book block is decorated by gold cut.
The present edition has got 15 of the eventual full complement of 18 (in later editons) metalcuts of the series, which derives from the workshop of the important French book painter Jean Pichore.
It may be dated to about 1506: the first dated use of the Hardouin device was in 1505, and from 1507 the cuts were copied by Vérard and the Hardouin changed the years in the almanach (in the present edition it comprises the period from 1500 to 1520).
