The Butler Hours
Artist/Maker
DatesMade: Made middle of 14th century
Material / Technique
Dimensionsh x w: Mått 20,5 x 14,5 cm
Inventory numberNMB 1727
AcqusitionPurchase 1958 funded by Hjalmar and Anna Wicanders fund
Other titlesTitle (en): The Butler Hours Inventory title (sv): Initial D med korsfästelsen Alternative title: Horae
DescriptionCatalogue raisonné: Research project 2022-2023, Illuminated Manuscripts, Christian Etheridge, Art Historian The Butler Hours Shelfmark: NMB 1726-1727 Date: c.1350 Place of Origin: England Material: Gouache and gold on parchment Dimensions: 200 x 145 mm Binding: None Number of Leaves: 2 Foliation: Artist: Unknown Type: Book of Hours Language: Latin Script: Gothic minuscule Number of Lines: 12 Textual Context: Hours of the Virgin Text: NMB 1726 (H)ora completorii datur sepulturae Corpus Christi nobile, spes vitae futurae (When as compline was come was laid in his tomb, Christ his body precious the hope of life to come.) NMB 1727 (D)eus in adiutorium meum intende. Domine ad adiuvandum me festina. (Incline unto my aid O God. O Lord make haste to help me.) Decoration: NMB 1726 recto has a patterned left-hand border in blue, brown and gold with ivy leaves in red, green, and blue. In the top left-hand corner is a grotesque marginal figure in red with small blue wings. The figure has lion’s legs and a long neck with terminates in the mouth of a lion. NMB 1726 verso also has a similar patterned left hand border, but in an initial H is a bust portrait of Christ with a gold leaf background. The figure of Christ has long curling hair and beard, with a robe in the same brown patterns as the border. He is illuminated in the East Anglian style of the mid-14th century. NMB 1727 recto is surrounded by a border that has many of the same style as NMB 1726 but with added acanthus and oak leaves. Within an initial D, with a background of gold leaf, is a scene of the Crucifixion. Christ is the central figure bent down dead on the Cross. On the left is Longinus who is thrusting his lance into the side of Christ where miraculously blood and water gush from the wound. Longinus wears a blue-grey robe with red patterns echoing the blood of Christ. He wears a red patterned tunic underneath and wears a hat in red and blue-grey. To the right is another soldier. He wears a pointed hat and wears a grey tunic with red patterned hose underneath. In his right hand he holds a club. NMB 1727 verso, has a left-hand border pattern similar to NMB 1726. Ownership: The cuttings represented by NMB 1726-1727 were originally part of a manuscript known as the Butler Hours that are now found in the collection of the Walters Art Museum in Baltimore. The name derives from the patrons of the book, the Boteler or Butler family of Wem in Shropshire, England who were descended from both English nobility and Welsh princes. The family coat of arms is present in the bottom border of the first page of Matins of the Virgin. The Butler Hours has been dated as early as 1340 however one of the miniatures depicts a Boteler lord with his wife and daughter at Mass. This could then represent William le Boteler, the 3rd Lord of Wem (†1369), as he had a daughter but no male heir. This could then present a date in the 1350s or 1360s (Bagnoli et. al. 2011). Smith (2019) has given a more precise date of c. 1340-1345 as she believes that the figures are William le Boteler, the 2nd Lord of Wem (1298-1361), with his first wife Margaret and perhaps Ela, second wife and widow of William le Boteler, the 1st Lord of Wem (†1334). The Butler Hours was illuminated by two artists who are unknown but also collaborated on manuscripts now held in collections in Trinity College, the British Library, Corpus Christi College in Oxford and even on a folio of the famous Luttrell Psalter (Dennison 1986, Sandler 1986, Smith 2019). These artists are believed to have been active in either Cambridge or Oxford during the mid-14th century. The original manuscript was believed to contain over 100 folios. There was a foliation written in ink c.1800 on the upper left of most of the surviving rectos. In NMB 1726, it is possible to make out the number 78 from this foliation and in NMB 1727 it is number 86. There was destruction of saint’s images in the manuscript such as St Thomas Becket as well as references to the Pope, that were carried out during the English Reformation in the middle of the 16th century. The next owner we know of was the London goldsmith and book collector, John Boykett Jarman (1782-1864). A great storm happened in London in 1846 that flooded his house and damaged his manuscripts including the Butler Hours, as well as the Hours of Yolande of Flanders, see NMB 1696-1697 (Backhouse 1968, Quandt 1992). It is unsure when the manuscript was cut apart, but the Butler Hours were exhibited intact by a T. Taylor, from Wakefield, England at a meeting of the Royal Archaeological Institute in London 1878. It then later ended up in the hands of the Parisian bookbinder Leon Gruel. In 1931, the Walters Art Museum purchased the majority of the manuscript leaves from Leon Gruel. Acquired: Purchased in 1955 from M. George Ryaux in Paris. Exhibitions: Gyllene böcker. Nyförvärv och nyupptäckter, held at the Nationalmuseum, Stockholm, December 1987 to March 1988. Leaves from the same Manuscript in other Collections: Baltimore, Walters Art Museum, MS W. 105. Related Manuscripts in Other Collections: Dublin, Trinity College, MS 94 (F.5.21). London, British Library, MS Add. 43120, Luttrell Psalter. London, British Library, MS Royal 10 E VII. Oxford, Corpus Christi College, MS 70. Literature: Abel, Ulf, and Nils Göran Hökby (eds.), Gyllene böcker. Nyförvärv och nyupptäckter (Stockholm: Nationalmuseum, 1987), no. 41, p. 40. Backhouse, Janet, ‘A Victorian Connoisseur and His Manuscripts: The Tale of Mr. Jarman and Mr. Wing’ in The British Museum Quarterly, Vol. 32, No. 3/4 (Spring, 1968), pp. 76-92. Bagnoli, Martina and Kathryn Gerry, The Medieval World: The Walters Art Museum (London: D Giles Limited, 2011), p.166-167, fig. 150. Bagnoli, Martina, Holger A. Klein, C. Griffith Mann, and James Robinson (eds.), Treasures of Heaven: Saints, Relics and Devotion in Medieval Europe (London: British Museum Press, 2011), no. 102, pp. 188-189. Dennison, Lynda, ‘The Fitzwarin Psalter and Its Allies: A Reappraisal’ in England in the Fourteenth Century: Proceedings of the 1985 Harlaxton Symposium, ed. by W. M. Ormrod (Woodbridge: Boydell, 1986), p. 60 n. 90. Nordenfalk, Carl, Bokmålningar från medeltid och renässans i Nationalmusei samlingar (Stockholm: Rabén & Sjögren, 1979), no. 11, pp. 56-57. Quandt, Abigail B., ‘The Butler Hours: The Conservation and Rebinding of a Fourteenth Century English Book of Hours’ in The Institute Of Paper Conservation: Conference Papers, Manchester 1992, ed. by Sheila Fairbrass (London: Institute of Paper Conservation, 1992) pp. 171-177. Sandgren, Eva Lindqvist, Illuminated Manuscripts in Swedish Collections, https://www.alvin-portal.org/alvin/view.jsf?pid=alvin-record%3A471052&dswid=-6776 Sandler, Lucy Freeman, Gothic Manuscripts: 1285–1385, 2 vols. (London: Harvey Miller, 1986), 2:130–31, no. 117. Smith, Kathryn A., ‘Moralizing the Mass in the Butler Hours’ in Manuscript Studies: A Journal of the Schoenberg Institute for Manuscript Studies, Vol. 4, No. 2, (2019), pp. 187-230. Wieck, Roger S., Painted Prayers: The Book of Hours in Medieval and Renaissance Art (New York: George Braziller inc., 1997)
Collection
Geographical origin