A fine leaf from the Llangattock Breviary, Italy c.1450 with delicate illumination on vellum

A single leaf from the Llangattock Breviary in Latin, Illuminated on vellum. [Ferrara, c.1450] 275 x 205mm. Single leaf. Two columns of 30 lines written in brown ink in a gothic bookhand, rubrics in red and blue, three initials in gold in blue and pink backgrounds, two long painted vertical column dividers to front and one to reverse traversing the full length of the text ending in elaborate and beautifully decorated painted and gold floral sprays to top and base of vertical stems. Along the left hand margin on the front there are six painted flower bulbs descending along the length of the margin held together with a fine gold leaf swirling vine out of which are coming other decorative motifs. Fine condition.
There is a pencil mark MS2341 which is possibly a Folio Fine Arts reference number.

Provenance:

1. This leaf comes from a parent manuscript corresponding to the physical dimensions and illumination of the Missal of Borso d’Este, marquis and then duke of Ferrara (Modena, Biblioteca Estense, MS. W.5.2, lat. 239), and must be from a sister-manuscript containing a breviary, also intended for use in the ruler’s chapel. It is now usually identified with the Breviary recorded in accounts in the d’Este archives as having been illuminated for Leonello by the artists Giorgio d’Alemagna, Bartolomeo de Benincà, Guglielmo Giraldi and Matteo de’ Pasti (see F. Toniolo La miniatura a Ferrara dal tempo di Cosmè Tura all’eredità di Ercole de’ Roberti, 1998, pp. 19, 20, 76-77).
2. John Rolls (1870-1916), 2nd Baron Llangattock, with inscriptions in the parent volume recording his family’s acquisition of it, already imperfect, during the Peninsular War in the early nineteenth century; sold in his sale Christie’s, 8 December 1958, lot 190.
3. Goodspeeds book shop, Boston, and widely dispersed by them.
4. Possibly leaf framed by Folio Fine Arts some time in the 1960s.