USE OF PARIS by A COMPLETE CALENDAR, IN FRENCH, FROM A MEDIEVAL ILLUMINATED VELLUM MANUSCRIPT BOOK OF HOURS - mid-15th century

Northern France, probably Paris, mid-15th century. 155 x 110 mm. (6 x 4 1/4"). Single column, 16 lines in a gothic book hand.
Each recto with three line "KL" in blues, white, and gold and filled with tiny flowers on a burnished gold ground, saints' names in red, blue, and gold, rectos with a panel border of colorful acanthus and flowers on the outer margin. ◆The Recto of the January leaf with light marginal smudges (as expected), a few names on one page slightly blurry, faint yellowing at inner margin of several openings, otherwise in fine condition, with paint and gilt entirely intact.

Beautifully written out in an extremely practiced and careful hand (and within remarkably commodious margins on three sides), this is a complete Book of Hours calendar with a particularly satisfying sense of order and proportion. It is desirable as a triple-graded example, where the more ordinary saints' days (typically the dates of martyrdom) alternate in blue and red, but with the major saints' days written in gold (here, St. Genevieve and St. Denis, patron saints of Paris, appear appropriately in gold on January 3 and October 9). This is also especially desirable as a so-called composite calendar, with the name of a saint (or special celebration) appearing on every day of the year. The origin of the composite calendar is uncertain, but the general opinion is that it was formalized in the early 14th century. The Parisian Hours of Jeanne d'Evreaux, copied in ca. 1330, has been put forth as an early example. In any case, the calendar was subject to numerous changes in the course of time, as various saints were canonized and supplanted those who, while still recognized as saintly, were deemed to be less favored residents for a particular calendar date. The saints' days on this calendar are fairly typical for the Use of Paris, and taken together with the high level of craftsmanship, it is likely that the parent manuscript was produced by a talented atelier in that city. The present calendar conforms to the one found in the Huntington Library's HM 1130 (described as Use of Paris, middle of the 15th century), although there are minor scribal variations, and the Huntington manuscript has saints' names in black and red only, rather than in the more attractive blue, red, and gold found in our example..