A Few Words on the Collection,
by Dr. Heribert Tenschert

In my long and fruitful career as antiquarian bookseller, I have bought and sold hundreds, even thousands of manuscripts and printed books of the most exquisite quality. My aim has always been to deal in the most extraordinary specimens, and my track record humbly attests to my successes in this rarified arena. But today I write not as a dealer of these precious works of art, but as a collector; because for all the books of kings, queens, and emperors I have owned over the years, it is this present collection - a truly awesome gathering of 430 printed Books of Hours - that has occupied me for over half of my career, and I consider it in many ways to be the apex of my work as a collector, scholar, and dealer. These books are as significant for their magnificent artistic feats as they are for their myriad historical implications for a world undergoing a shift from late Medieval turbulence to early modern sophistication. From one collector to another, I implore you to read on.

Allow me to try to at least briefly outline the significance of this collection. Its absolute singularity is evident if we consider that is comprises more specimens than those housed in the Bibliotheque nationale de France in Paris and the British Library in London combined. By now the number of copies exceeds 425, of which 375 have been described in detail in the nine volumes of our catalogue on the collection. Furthermore, even though the BnF calls ca. 200 Books of Hours its own, this also includes a good number of fragments, sometimes single leaves or even only partial leaves.

If one were to try and express the significance of this collection in terms of old master paintings, then this would be the equivalent of a collection that comprises as many masterworks by Leonardo and Raphael as the collections of the Louvre and the National Gallery combined. I’m only drawing on this comparison to reinforce just how truly unique the position of our collection is.

The “medieval beststeller”

Before I go into detail with the description of the collection, it is essential to take a brief look at the Book of Hours, and its crucial importance between the years 1300-1500. The Book of Hours, conceived as a prayer book for high-ranking laypeople, quickly grew in popularity: at the beginning of the 14th century, then still in manuscript form, it was produced for royals (often women). It soon became a “medieval bestseller” and reached its zenith especially in France: particularly worth mentioning are the efforts by the Limbourg Brothers for the Duke of Berry around 1400, Jean Fouquet’s masterly illuminations for King Charles VII around 1450, and the works of Jean Poyer, Bourdichon, and the Master of Claude de France, for Charles VIII and Louis XII. Around the same time, the production of books of hours also flourished in Flanders, where notable artists such as Gerard David, Gerard Horenbout, and Simon Bening were at work.

There are thousands of surviving manuscript Books of Hours, but most of them of unassuming calibre and with few illustrations; over the past 30 years, my business alone has owned and sold over 1,250 manuscripts of the finest quality. For the sake of this introduction’s scope, I shall not go into the reasons for why this is.

The Printing Revolution

It cannot be overstated how rare manuscripts of such splendour as the Très Riches Heures of the Duke of Berry were at the time, which is evident in the fact that its completion dragged on for most of the 15th century (ca. 1412-1485). Manuscripts such as the one commissioned by the publisher Antoine Vérard for King Charles VIII, which contains over 500 large and small miniatures (more on this in our catalogue Leuchtendes Mittelalter Neue Folge VI, Nr. 23a), are one of only a handful of royal luxury products, with which a mere mortal hardly ever came face to face.

Imagine then the radical change brought on by the invention of printing around 1454, as well as the addition of illustration techniques such as woodcut and metal engraving. The latter were first found at A. Pfister in Bamberg 1460, and then later (and permanently) in France (Lyon) in the mid 70s, and with Jean Dupré in Paris even only in 1484.

As a result, the book market was all of a sudden open to the less wealthy as well as members of the upwardly mobile social classes, in a way that had seemed impossible even 20 years prior. From that point, things developed with rapid speed. While the first Book of Hours printed with woodblocks by Vérard in Paris was but a slack trial balloon, the oldest specimen in our collection, produced not even two years later (alpha 1, 1486 or 1487), already demonstrates a complete vision of the printed book as its own little world in text and image. Only a few months later, over the course of the year 1488, this world would yet again be transformed through the work of Dupré and Vérard (see beta, gamma, delta etc. in the collection), and find itself fully differentiated as a universe of images.

The Epitome of the Illustrated Book

If one bothers to count the individual “image instances” in such a printed Book of Hours from the period 1488-1520, both large and small woodcuts and metal engravings, as well as borders framing almost every page, then the number at times exceeds well over one thousand images, an abundance, which was completely unheard of in manuscripts, and only realised in perhaps half a dozen during the 15th century (such as the “Bedford” Book of Hours of Louis de Laval, and only one or two others).

At the same time the memory of the manuscript could be kept alive in the materials used, for example the precious vellum, and, if desired, it was even possible to have certain large illustrations painted in (and decorated with silver and gold leaf) by illuminators. These illuminations can also be an indication for the books provenance: if a book’s images have all received illumination, then we know we are dealing with a prestigious commission (as one can see in our collection, for example with numbers gamma, 1, 17.1, 96, 117.3 etc.). These books were produced for the kings or queens of France (Charles VIII, Louis XII, Claude de France, Anne de France), or the Grand Constable of France Anne de Montmorency, and their luxury far exceeded even the richest manuscripts at the time.

The significance of the printed Book of Hours therefore lies in the fact that it marks the point in history in which the entire visual legacy of art from almost one and a half millennia becomes more affordable, and therefore available to a broader public. How gloriously it succeeded in this is evident in the triumph of the illustrated printed Book of Hours after 1485, incidentally almost exclusively produced in Paris. The approx. 700-800 editions of Books Hours of the century between 1485-1586 that we know of today, speak a convincing language.

Now one has to envision that approx. one half of the entire production are present in our collection - perhaps even more, since ca. 50-70 titles listed in bibliographies are now impossible to verify, and possibly have never existed.

A Museum of Art from the Middle Ages and the Early Modern Period

This feat is unimaginable to realise in any sector of the art and book market. This collection represents one of the most complete museums of art from the middle ages and the early modern period. In the year 2005, when the collection’s scope was less than half of what it is today, it was the subject of a large exhibition at the Frankfurt Museum for Applied Art, where it was able to fill two halls in the most splendid way.

What’s more, I currently have between 50 and 100 important manuscript Books of Hours from the time 1460-1550 in my possession, immaculately preserved, and with illustrations and illuminations by the very same artists that also worked on the printed Books of Hours. If desired, any number of these could be added to the collection.

Altogether this would amount to a panorama of art, script, print, and spirituality - in other words: a panorama of life at this immensely eventful time in history that marks a moment of incipience. Not only would no museum be able to capture this moment in as nuanced and powerful a fashion as this collection does, but it is fair to say that no museum in the world has anything that is even close to capturing it at all (even the Morgan Library and Museum in New York owns no more than 130 plus printed Books of Hours).

One could fill hundreds of pages more with the explorations of the various strands of significance that these Books of Hours hold, regarding history, art, the history of printing, literature, and the history of spirituality and religion, but these few thoughts shall suffice until the forthcoming publication of a book by a distinguished expert, which will be available in both German and English.

For now I’d like to move on and tell you a bit about the significance of our collection. As mentioned, the collection now consists of 430 specimens, 375 of which appear in our catalogue. Almost all of them are complete or nearly complete, with only four or five exceptions, which have been included for the sake of their rich illuminations (for example: lambda 131d).

Some Numbers…

I’ll let the numbers speak for themselves:

• This collection contains 104 incunabula (books printed before 1501). The Bibliotheque nationale de France owns 62, out of which some are fragmentary. The Bavarian State Library houses the world’s largest collection of incunabula (22,000+), but out of those only six are books of hours!

• Among the books of the collection are 100 unica, meaning they are the only copy known.

• Furthermore, 200 are rarissima, meaning there are fewer than 6 copies known worldwide. All remaining specimens (with the exception of three) are rara, referring to less than 20 known copies worldwide (although in our case the number is usually below ten). To put this in perspective, one need only consider that there are still 48 existing copies (or fragments) of the Gutenberg Bible, which is generally considered the epitome of rarity. This should give you an idea of how rare these Books of Hours are, which according to our research were often printed in only two, and at most 10 or 20 copies on vellum.

• 285 are printed on vellum - such a large number hasn’t been assembled in either a private or commercial catalogue in 200 years.

• More than a third, or to be exact, 175 are illuminated, sometimes by the most important artists of their time, for example Jean Pichore, the Master of Robert Gaguin, the Master of Martainville, the Master of Philippa of Guelders, Etienne Collault, Charles Jourdain, etc.

• Almost a third (130 specimens) are still in their original binding or an early binding from the 16th century, among them some true works of art, featuring elaborate painted work and leather inlays.

• All books are in very good to immaculate condition (with only five or six exceptions), and have received cases half-bound in morocco, which come in three sizes and were custom-made for the collection.

The extensive and comprehensive scholarly commentary that accompanies this collection has been gathered in nine volumes, which were published in two blocks: In 2003, we published HORAE I-III: three landscape folio volumes (1,340 pages, incl. 700 colour illustrations) which document the 158 printed books of hours that the collection consisted of at the time. In 2015, the second and much larger part, HORAE IV-IX went into print: on over 3,000 pages, including 1,800 colour illustrations, the six volumes in landscape folio form describe a further 217 editions. The catalogue offers more than 1,000 depictions of all large woodcuts or metal etchings in the collection, while vol. IX features a complete overview of all series of images that occur in these books of hours, as well as documentations of all border cycles and small image series, 170 illustrations of bindings, and lastly exhaustive registers, indices, concordances, lists, and bibliographies.

Needless to say, my small team and I are proud of the achievement that is the completion of this catalogue, which would be extraordinary coming from a large institution, or a business with considerably larger staff. But most importantly, this catalogue offers a prospective buyer the perfect companion to their exploration and research of these treasures!

It has taken me 30 years to bring together this collection, and while it could not have been done had it not been for my established role in the art market, I suspect that it was some sort of luck or coincidence, or in other words, “help from above”, that ultimately aided me in assembling the world’s largest assortment of illustrated books of devotion, prayer, and meditation from that momentous time on the cusp of modernity.

H. T.

HIGHLIGHTS