Manuscript book of hours for the use of Rouen, written and illuminated in Rouen, France sometime during the 15th century. Includes the typical common elements of a book of hours: church year calendar in French; readings from the Gospels; Hours of the Virgin, a set of eight devotional texts in Latin, one to be recited at each of the eight canonical hours of the day; penitential psalms, litany of saints, prayers for the dead, and prayers to the Virgin. Script: Latin text in gothic hand in black, with instructions in red ink, 15 lines per page; months of the calendar illuminated in gold, with saints' days written in red or blue ink. Illustrations: includes 11 large miniatures within arched frames, of scenes from the life of Christ (Annunciation, Nativity, Crucifixion, Pietà), as well as portraits of the four Evangelists, King David with his harp, and St. Michael overcoming the devil; donor portrait on verso of leaf 53; all miniatures vividly colored and illuminated in red, blue, green, rose, black, and white; enclosed by richly painted and illuminated borders of arabesques, leafy branches, flowers and strawberry vines; illuminated floral borders along text margins; large and small illuminated rose and blue capitals. Binding: bound in blind-stamped calf over boards by Cambridge stationer and bookbinder Nicholas Spierinck, with date of 1520 supplied by Ferrari; upper and lower boards decorated with small blind-tooled square stamps containing figures of beasts and birds, and the device of binder with his initials "N" and "S," arranged in intersecting horizontal and vertical rows; vellum endpapers; all edges gilt. In modern beige cloth and brown leather clamshell box having gold-stamped spine title "Book of Hours." Provenance: From the library of Viscount Lee of Fareham, White Lodge, Richmond Park. A gift to Dr. Elmer Belt from Evelyn Cushman, 1954. Dr. Belt's illustrated bookplate on recto of front endleaf, with caption "From the House of Belt."In Latin and French.
Script is in a single 17th-century hand, possibly that of a French scribe, suggested by pen scribblings in French in Chapter 263. Many of the spaces for illustrations have been left blank; in most cases, the location of these spaces conforms with the illustration spaces in the Du Fresne edition of 1651. Eighteen of the spaces contain very informal drawings and scribblings in pen and pencil which have no relation to Leonardo's Trattato. They were added later by artists at the end of the 17th century, which, as Steinitz indicates, suggests that perhaps the present copy "was in use in an artist's workshop in the high baroque period, close to the schools of Bernini and Borromini." These drawings include sketches of figures, as well as ornaments and architectural decoration in pencil, some of them redrawn or partially redrawn in pen and ink. Fabriano paper, with watermark of a saint carrying a cross, similar to Briquet 7628. Binding is old [17th- or 18th-century?] tree-calf paper over paper boards; brown leather spine and corners; gilt spine title "Manoscritto." Pencilled notes on front and back pastedowns indicate former ownership of Sir Thomas Phillipps, and Los Angeles bookdealers Zeitlin & VerBrugge, respectively, the latter dated March 9, 1946. Provenance: From the library of Sir Thomas Phillipps; "Phillipps MS 21154" above text on recto of first leaf.Manuscript copy of selected chapters from Leonardo's Trattato della pittura, probably from the first printed edition in Italian of 1651, edited by Raphael Du Fresne. Text of the manuscript begins and ends as the first edition of 1651, with 365 chapters, captions, and numbers. The unique element of this copy is the addition of three sections which do not appear in any of the other handwritten copies or in the printed editions. For a complete transcription of these three added chapters of Belt MS 34, see Steinitz, Appendix 7, page 232.
Possible range of dates based on textual reference to date of 1741 and handwriting style.Manuscript copy of notes in English on proportion and the art of drawing the human body, excerpted from English translations of Charles-Alphonse Dufresnoy's De arte graphica (The art of painting) and Giovanni Paolo Lomazzo's Trattato dell'arte della pittura (Treatise on the art of painting), and from William Cowper's The anatomy of humane bodies. Long before they were actually published, Leonardo's notebooks were freely loaned by his heir Francesco Melzi, and studied by numerous artists who used them to complete their own works. Giovanni Paolo Lomazzo's Trattato dell'arte de la pittura, which was published in 1584, contains many passages borrowed from Leonardo whose own treatise, Trattato della pittura, was not published until 1651, 67 years later. Dufresnoy came in contact with Leonardo's ideas by reading Lomazzo, and published many of them in his treatise, De arte graphica, which first appeared in 1668; see K.T. Steinitz, Leonardo da Vinci's Trattato della pittura. Copenhagen: Munksgaard, 1958, pages 10-12, 16-17. The present Belt manuscript, possibly compiled in England, also contains references to William Cowper's anatomical treatise on the human body on leaves [4]r and [5], illustrated with a detailed and finely executed drawing of a human skeleton; leaf [7]v contains notes on Cowper's proportions of the fetus, infant, child, and young adult. Other drawings illustrate the proper proportions of the human head, face, and hand. As a point of reference, the measurements are given on leaf [9]v of a plaster model of a statue of Venus de' Medici, which was commissioned "by a grand duke's order in 1741 and lent to Lord Hobart in Brickling." The final page of notes refers to Leonardo da Vinci's studies on the proportions of a horse, accompanied by a full-page illustration of a horse with body parts and measurements labeled.
![BELT MS 37 [Book of hours : Use of Rouen].](https://iiif.library.ucla.edu/iiif/2/ark%3A%2F21198%2Fzz000j3rm7/full/!200,200/0/default.jpg)
