Catalogue Roberti Fine Art, TEFAF Maastricht 2026 (1) compressed - Flipbook - Page 26
Other miniatures now removed
Several full-page miniatures were removed from the Hours of Albrecht of Brandenburg no later
than the mid-nineteenth century. A group of sixteen leaves, acquired in Rome in 1856 by Frederick,
fourth Marquess of Londonderry, appears to derive from the same two-volume commission; his
seal was affixed to their parchment backings. Five of these 4 The Crucifixion, The Annunciation, The
Virgin and Child with Saint Anne, The Last Judgment, and The Assumption of the Virgin 4 later passed
through the collection of the Reverend E. S. Dewick and entered the Fitzwilliam Museum,
Cambridge (MS 294a3e) in 1918. Other leaves from the Londonderry group were subsequently
dispersed: a Pietà and a Saint Bridget were acquired by Robert Lehman (the former now in the
Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York); Saint Gertrude of Nivelles entered the Carnegie Museum of
Art, Pittsburgh; Christ before Caiaphas is preserved in the Nationalmuseum, Stockholm; further
sheets, including saints and Passion subjects recorded in the London art market in the early
twentieth century, are now divided between public and private collections. Their identical
dimensions, border formats, iconographic sequence and stylistic character confirm their origin
within the same ambitious Bruges project for Cardinal Albrecht, and attest to the original scale and
coherence of the manuscript’s pictorial programme.
Other illuminators
In addition to Simon Bening’s extensive contribution, the manuscript preserves the work of two
other illuminators active within his workshop. Eight of the half-page miniatures and all of the
historiated borders are by a close collaborator conventionally known as the Victoria and Albert
Master, so named after his work in the V&A Hours (London, V&A, MS L.3931981). He painted the
frontispiece with Cardinal Brandenburg’s arms and the half-page miniatures nos. 26 (the World by
Sunlight), 27 (the World by Moonlight), 41 (the Nailing to the Cross), 56 (Saint Matthias), 79 (the
Martyrdom of Saint Erasmus), 80 (the Ten Thousand Martyrs) and 116 (a priest giving absolution).
He was also responsible for the entire Calendar (nos. 2325) and numerous borders, including those
to nos. 26, 27, 46, 79, 84, 86, 88, 119, 1223124. His compositions draw upon the pattern-sheets
inherited from Alexander (Sanders) Bening, the Master of the First Prayerbooks of Maximilian, and
reveal direct parallels with the Hastings Hours and related manuscripts.
A second assistant, referred to by de Hamel as the Stockholm Master, also collaborated with
Bening and contributed to Brandenburg’s later Stockholm Hours (Kungliga Biblioteket, cod. A.227).
In the present manuscript he painted the half-page miniature no. 87 (Saint Dominic) and a wide
range of lively historiated borders (including nos. 31, 32, 35, 38, 40, 49, 50, 68, 71, 76, 90393, 100,
102, 1043105, 108, 1103112, 115, 117 and 120). His brightly coloured scenes, rich in depictions of
women’s lives, markets, jewellery, domestic interiors and seasonal labours, add a distinctive note
of narrative vitality and social observation to the manuscript’s visual programme.
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