The Burial, Office of the Dead (Leaf from a Book of Hours)

Luçon Master (French, active 1390–1417)

about 1410

Place of ManufactureParis, France

Medium/TechniqueTempera, ink and gold leaf on parchment

DimensionsOverall (page dimensions): 18.4 x 13.6 cm (7 1/4 x 5 3/8 in.)

Credit LineGift of John Goelet in honor of Hanns Swarzenski

Accession number1973.691

On View

Not on view

ClassificationsBooks and manuscripts

Collections

Europe

ProvenanceFrom a Book of Hours, possibly made for Margaret of Bavaria (b. 1363 - d. 1424), wife of John the Fearless of Burgundy [see note 1]. July 20, 1916, anonymous sale, Sotheby's, London, lot 954 , sold to Bernard Quaritsch, London [see note 2]; about 1916/1917, the manuscript was taken apart and twelve text leaves and twelve miniatures were re-bound. 1917, re-bound manuscript acquired by Alfred Chester Beatty (b. 1875 - d. 1968), London and Dublin, and subsequently broken up [see note 3]; December 3, 1968, Chester Beatty sale, Sotheby's, London, lot 23D, sold to Herbert Bier (dealer), London, in joint ownership with Arthur Kauffmann (dealer), London, and Mrs. F. Scharf [see note 4]; 1969, sold by Herbert Bier to John Goelet; 1973, year-end gift of John Goelet to the MFA. (Accession Date: January 9,1974)

NOTES:
[1] As first suggested in a letter to the MFA from Christopher de Hamel, Sotheby's, London (March 10, 1983), who noted that the presence in the original manuscript of a miniature of St. Margaret and the metrical legend of the saint suggested a female owner who had a particular devotion to the St. Margaret, such as Margaret of Bavaria.

[2] At the time of the sale, the manuscript comprised 110 leaves and was in an eighteenth-century red Morocco binding. Information about its early twentieth-century history was first provided by Christopher de Hamel (as above, n. 1); see also Medieval and Renaissance Manuscripts, Sotheby's, London, July 7, 2015, lot 36.

[3] Beatty Western MS.104. Around 1930, the manuscript was broken up and the individual illuminations were mounted and framed separately.

[4] Information taken from the Herbert Bier archives, Wallace Collection, London, through the blog http://mssprovenance.blogspot.com ("The Herbert Bier Archive at the Wallace Collection, July 4, 2015).