Book of Hours Leaf Attributable to Cornelia van Wulfschkerke of Sion Convent - Bruges/Ghent (ca. 1500)
Bruges or Ghent, ca. 1500. Possibly attributable to Cornelia van Wulfschkercke. (125 x 85 mm) Latin. Single leaf from Book of Hours. Single column witht three 2-line initials on recto and verso with decorative gilt penwork on coloured backgrounds of pink, blue and green. 17 lines of Gothic rotunda with uncrossed Tironian et, hairlines on a and decorative hairlines on large initials, some ascenders have thorns and bifurcations, some descenders have bifucations. Gothic formata elements such as diamond pedes, but letter forms are rounded rather than typical Gothic angular form and less severe fusion throughout. Penstroke crosshatches at end of lines indicating broken words. Rubricated in pink. Recto is likely from Prime of Hours of the Virgin, likely Use of Rome. Marginal illustration of peacock eating spider and butterfly on thistle. High quality, thin and creamy parchment with minor marginal browning. Housed in passepartout, unmounted. German description in modern pencil along bottom border of passepartout, with numbers collector’s code. Likely from the collection of Roger Martin (1939-2020). MB657/MSB7v
About the artist and the parent book:
This leaf likely comes from a now-dispersed Book of Hours produced around 1500 to 1510 in Ghent or Bruges, with illustrations by a noted Carmelite nun, Cornelia van Wulfschkercke of the Sion convent (as identified by A. M. W. As-Vijvers). Cornelia entered the convent of Sion by 1495, took her vows shortly after the turn of the century, and became an important figure in the production of manuscripts in the Bruges/Ghent region. Cornelia produced around 23 known devotional books, both from her own hand and from her workshop for patrons within the monastic community as well as lay-patrons.
Previous auction records indicate that the parent book was owned by a private Dutch collector before 1995 but its leaves had been dispersed throughout Europe by the time Roger Martin set about to collect as many of them as possible in 1999.
About the Text (Prime of the Hours of the Virgin):
The Little Office of the Blessed Virgin Mary originated in monastic practice around the 8th century and was connected with Marian devotions and votive Masses. It spread widely by the 10th century, especially among secular clergy in Italy, France, and England, with regional variations. By the 12th century, it was prescribed for the Augustinian Canons and gradually became obligatory for clergy by the 14th century. Pope Pius V standardized it in 1585, and it was widely adopted by laity through Books of Hours and women’s congregations.
The text is laid out in a gothic rotunda bookhand (a bit more rounded than its well-known angular palaeographic sibling), ruled in pink ink, with generous margins.
When the reader looked upon the thistle visited by the butterfly in the margins, she was meant to interpret the bodily and spiritual torment, particularly of John the Baptist in the wilderness. The thistle, however, was known to be a healthy food, good for dispelling melancholy, if the spines could be avoided. The butterfly was known to represent the resurrected soul while the peacock on the recto stood symbolically as Christ’s resurrection. The spider holds the dual significance of perseverance or pestilence; given that we see the peacock vanquishing the spider, we can assume that it is to be read as Christ vanquishing death. These symbolic foliate and avian borders are characteristic of northern French and Netherlandish production ca. 1470 into the early 1500s— not quite a strewn border, but similar.