Rothschild Prayerbook 1500-1520
THE ROTHSCHILD PRAYERBOOK, a Book of Hours, use of Rome, in Latin, ILLUMINATED MANUSCRIPT ON VELLUM [Ghent or Bruges, c.1505-1510]
228 x 160mm. 252 leaves, each devotion opens with a five- or six-line illuminated initial with staves of acanthus against a coloured ground
Author: Prayerbook
Sold for: USD 13.6 million
Auction house: Christie's New York
Sale date: January 2014
Seller: Rothschild banking dynasty
Buyer:Australian businessman Kerry Stokes
From Christie's:
The Rothschild Prayerbook or Rothschild Hours (both titles are used for other books), is an important Flemish illuminated manuscript book of hours, compiled c. 1500–20 by a number of artists. It has 254 folios, with a page size of 228 × 160 mm. It was once in the Austrian National Library in Vienna as Codex Vindobonensis S.N. 2844. Since its sale in 1999 it has held the world record price at auction for an illuminated manuscript. In 2014 it was purchased by Australian businessman Kerry Stokes from Christie's New York and is on display in the National Library of Australia.
It contains the work of several leading miniaturists of the final flowering of the Ghent-Bruges school of Flemish illumination, who also co-operated on the Grimani Breviary, the Spinola Hours (Malibu) and other major manuscripts of these years. Most of the sixty-seven large miniatures are by the "Master of the First Prayerbook of Maximilian", an older artist, and Gerard Horenbout or the Master of James IV of Scotland (these being two names probably for the same artist). Other miniatures are by Gerard David, better known as a panel painter, or a pupil working in his style, with two miniatures by Simon Bening, and other work by further masters.