The Sheriff Chiche Hours
Use of Sarum
Manuscript in Latin on vellum
Flanders, Bruges and England, London, c. 1390-1410.
230 x 160 mm
Price on request.
134 leaves. 19 full-page miniatures and 16 large decorative initials in decorative borders. Textually complete, wanting 4 leaves with miniatures. 16th-century binding of dark brown leather over wooden boards, rebacked. Both covers have a blind-tooled double-frame and central ornament in the shape of a lozenge. Overall in very good condition.
Made in Bruges around 1390–1400 for the English market and enhanced in England, this previously unknown Book of Hours combines Flemish and English workmanship in an extensive cycle of nineteen miniatures, including an extremely rare Manus Meditationis.
Among several artists, one—close to Herman Scherrer—stands out for the delicacy of his paintings. Brought to England soon after 1400 and first owned by Thomas Chiche of Kent (d. 1429), the manuscript is a complex and striking witness to the close artistic exchange between Bruges and England, and to the intertwined influences of English, Flemish, French, and German painting around 1400.
The manuscript opens with an extraordinary illumination representing a Manus Meditationis: a meditational hand diagram treated with the same care and visual richness as the miniatures of the cycle. The image, in a blue background, combines the textual and diagrammatic functions of penitential hand-diagrams, a type exceptionally rare in illuminated manuscripts. Each finger bears inscriptions urging reflection on sin, death, and the transience of life.
Three distinct hands can be observed in this beautiful book of hours: The first painter, certainly Flemish, is responsible for the eight miniatures of the Passion cycle together with the miniature of Saint Jerome. A second, most probably English artist executed the portraits of the saints in the Suffrages, as well as the Annunciation and the Pietà. The third painter, the most refined of the group, is responsible for the Office of the Dead, the Souls Going to Heaven, and the Virgin and Child.
