Single leaf on vellum from a Book of Hours.

Single leaf on vellum (183 x 114mm), verso blank, recto with wide leafy, two-sided enclosed border of red, blue and gold acanthus leaves on gold and white shaped grounds, strawberries, buds and flowers of pink and red, rectangular miniature at foot of page with monkey-like figure carrying another on its back, reaching arms out to a stork-like bird, shades and highlights picked out in gold, trees either side with red and yellow flowers, background of grass and larger shrubs, all flanked/enclosed within two columns.  Nineteen lines of gothic text (final line left blank) with two, two-line initials and others with yellow highlights, line filler of gold crosshatching on red, some smudging to colour, ink worn in places, thumbed at lower fore-edge. 

France (Paris or Tours?),

An attractive leaf on vellum from a Book of Hours, with a playful and unusual miniature at the foot of the page depicting two monkey-like creatures and a crane. Like many forms of such marginalia they bear no relation to the text above, and their role here is unclear. Perhaps they represent a world turned upside down, in which anthropomorphised creatures behave as humans and the natural order of things is inverted; but they do so contained safely within the marginal borders, like gargoyles on a church facade, kept away from the sacred interior. 

The text is from Vespers of the Hours of the Virgin, the central text of the Book of Hours; Vespers are evening prayers, read at dusk. 

Stock Code: 252874