Book of Hours: St. Catherine and kneeling donor (Catherine of Cleves?)

Artist/Maker

DatesMade: Made c. 1430

Material / Technique

Dimensionsh x w: Mått 14,8 x 10,7 cm

Inventory numberNMB 1646

AcqusitionPurchase 1951

Other titlesTitle (sv): Tidebok: Den heliga Katarina tillbeds av en stiftarinna (Katarina av Kleve?) (fol.110-111) Title (en): Book of Hours: St. Catherine and kneeling donor (Catherine of Cleves?) Original title: Horae neerlandice

DescriptionDescription: NMB 1646 A Book of Hours owned by Catherine of Cleves. [Utrecht, c.1430] Catalogue raisonné: NMB 1646 A Book of Hours owned by Catherine of Cleves. [Utrecht, c.1430] Physical Description MATERIAL: Parchment. BINDING: Tight spine brown leather rebinding with blocking blind tooling decoration on the boards. Yellow and green embroidered Italian Renaissance endbands. DIMENSIONS: 148 × 107 mm (pages)/ 159 x 124 x 47 mm (binding) NUMBER OF LEAVES: 208ff. RULING: 18 lines of text lined in red. LANGUAGE: Middle Dutch. SCRIPT: Gothic textura. RUBRICATION: Red, blue, and red/blue fleuronné rubrics. Text Two scribes. Hand A wrote fol. 2-171 and Hand B fol. 171-208. The calendar and Hours of the Virgin are missing. Fol. 2-79: Hours of Corpus Christi. Fol. 81-109: Hours of the Cross. Fol. 111-167: Hours of Saint Catherine. Fol. 168-208: Office of the Dead. Decoration Three full miniatures (a fourth was found before fol. 168 but has been removed). There are also four large, decorated initials, with 16 gold initials. Fol. 1v: This miniature shows an altar with a monstrance. Fol. 44r: This is a marginal illustration of a man’s face. Fol. 80v: A miniature of the Crucifixion, with Mary looking down to the ground and St John the Evangelist reading from his gospel. Fol. 110v: A miniature of Saint Catherine is depicted as a large figure holding a palm of martyrdom and the broken wheel that is the symbol of her martyrdom. Underneath her feet is the Emperor Maxentius who ordered her execution. Kneeling towards Saint Catherine is the owner of the book, most likely Catherine of Cleves who says in a banderole “O Katerina bid woor my” (Oh Catherine, pray for me). Fol. 203r: A marginal illustration of an animal. Provenance 1. Made in Utrecht c. 1430 for Catherine of Cleves, duchess of Guelders. 2. A 16th century inscription by a Joffrouwe Bogaert. 3. Owned in the 17th or 18th century by the Jesuits at Antwerp with the inscription Domus professus societatis IESU Antv. 4. Purchased at auction for the Nationalmuseum March 15th-16th 1951 from Karl & Faber, Munich, lot 11. Exhibited 1. Copenhagen, National Museum, Gyldne Böger, April-May 1952. 2. Stockholm, Nationalmuseum, Gyllenne böcker, May-September 1952. 3. Amsterdam, Rijksmuseum, Middeleeuwse Kunst der Noordelijke Nederlanden, Jubileumtentoonstelling, June-September 1958. Commentary In the 15th century there was a flourishing of manuscripts from the Northern Netherlands. NMB 1646 differs from many other Books of Hours because of the Hours of Corpus Christi and the Hours of Saint Catherine. Panofsky (1953) pointed towards the artist being one of the Utrecht School of manuscript illuminators working for the court of the Duchy of Guelders, and especially for Catherine of Cleves, Duchess of Guelders and Countess of Zutphen (1417–1476). This connection is further indicated by the large illumination of Saint Catherine with donor figure on folio 110v and the Hours of Saint Catherine. In the Middle Ages, people were named after a saint. She married Arnold, Duke of Guelders (1410 –1473), in 1430 and the manuscript could have been made for this occasion. A decade later she had another Book of Hours made for her, now New York: Morgan Library & Museum, M.917/M.945 considered by Nordenfalk as the greatest of all Northern Netherlandish medieval manuscripts. The artist was the Masters of Zweder van Culemborg. The Masters of Zweder van Culemborg is best known for illuminating the manuscript Baltimore, Walters MS W.174, the Missal of Eberhard von Greiffenklau. The Masters of Zweder van Culemborg, were active in the Utrecht area between 1420 and 1440, named after the bishop of Utrecht (1425-1433), for whom they produced a Missal in the late 1420s (now Bressanone, Bibl. del Seminario Maggiore). This missal also features work by another artist the Master of Catherine of Cleves, linking it to the Hours of Catherine of Cleves mentioned above. The manuscript was owned by the Jesuits in Antwerp. This house was relatively short lived, being founded in 1621 and closed in 1773. Bibliography Boström, Kjell, ‘Un livre d’heures d’Utrecht au Musée National á Stockholm’ in Nordisk tidskrift för bok- och biblioteksväsen, 38, (1951), pp. 156-62. Finke, Ulrich, ‘Utrecht: Zentrum nordniederländischer Buchmaleriei’ in Oud Holland, 78, (1963), 27-66, pp. 57-59. Nordenfalk, Carl, Bokmålningar från medeltid och renässans i Nationalmusei samlingar (Stockholm: Rabén & Sjögren, 1979), no. 25, pp. 97-99. Panofsky, Erwin, “Guelders and Utrecht” A Footnote on a recent Acquisition of the Nationalmuseum at Stockholm’ in Konsthistorisk tidskrift, 22: 3-4, (1953), pp. 90-102. Sandgren, Eva Lindqvist, Illuminated Manuscripts in Swedish Collections, https://www.alvin-portal.org/alvin/resultList.jsf?dswid=7830&p=1&searchType=EXTENDED&sortString=creationYear_sort_asc&noOfRows=10&af=%5B%22ARCHIVE_ORG_ID_facet%3A67%22%5D&query=&aq=%5B%5B%7B%22HOST%22%3A%22alvin-record%3A471052%22%7D%5D%5D&aqe=%5B%5D Wieck, Roger S., ‘The Hours of Catherine of Cleves: The Manuscript That Changed the World’ in Books of Hours Reconsidered, eds. Sandra Hindman and James Marrow (London, Harvey Millers Publishers, 2013), pp. 51-61. Research project 2022-2023, Illuminated Manuscript, Christian Etheridge, Art Historian.

Collection

Geographical origin

MaterialParchment

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