Book of hours: use of Paris

This collection contains a highly illuminated medieval vellum Book of Hours in Latin and French, from the 1500s. It is housed in a deluxe, custom-made red morocco folding box, with gilt lettering on the spine: “Horae France Early 16th Cent.” The book has 19th-century red velvet over wooden boards, endpapers composed of a vellum document dated 1467, with a notarial signature, pastedowns removed. The book itself measures 7 7/8 x 5 ¾ inches (200 x 145 mm) in a single column, with 26 lines per column, in a bâtarde hand. There are 132 leaves and the contents include Calendar, Gospel lessons, Passion Sequence, Hours of the Virgin, mixed with the Hours of the Cross and Holy Spirit, Penitential Psalms, Litany, Office of the Dead, "Obsecro te," "O Intemerata," and "Stabat Mater," prayers to various Saints, other prayers in French and Latin, Passion Sequences, Fifteen Joys of the Virgin. Each page is illuminated with decorative borders featuring acanthus, flowers, rustic branches, painted gold patterns, and more than fifty large and small miniatures. The calendar is illustrated with 24 small miniatures consisting of the appropriate labor and zodiac sign for each month. Eight paintings in the text measure up to half the page and are placed as space fillers at the ends of texts (subjects including the Arma Christi, the Wound of Christ, two depictions of the Holy Spirit as a dove, two flower arrangements, and two hearts pierced with the nails of the Crucifixion). Nineteen large miniatures, each surrounded by a full border composed of angels holding a coat of arms (painted over in silver), with subjects St. John on Patmos, Betrayal, Annunciation, Visitation, Crucifixion, Pentecost, Nativity, Annunciation to the Shepherds, Adoration of the Magi, Presentation in the Temple, Flight into Egypt, Coronation of the Virgin, David in Prayer, Funeral Procession, Adoration of the Virgin, with kneeling patron, Entrance into Jerusalem, Last Supper, and Man of Sorrows.