The Transfiguration, an illuminated cutting from a Book of Hours on vellum. [France (eastern?), 15th century (c.1470s/80s)]

FROM THE RENOWNED BURCKHARDT-WILDT ALBUM

The Transfiguration, Christ stands on a hill in the centre with his face transformed to gold and with Moses and Elias appearing in the clouds one either side. SS Peter, James and John gaze in adoration in the foreground; with arched scalloped top, richly illuminated in gold and colours.  

Size 104 x 84 mm, the verso preserving 12 (out of 16?) lines of text in two sizes of gothic script, with illuminated 1- and 2-line initials and line-fillers, each with the upper edge slightly cropped, with a row of sewing(?) holes, and some pigment loss, framed and glazed

A highly expressive and unusual miniature from the renowned Burckhardt-Wildt album, showing the dominant figures of the scene in splendid detail, especially facial expressions. The figures, which often display big heads, high foreheads and snub noses, show links with the Master of Walters 222 who seems to have worked in Poitiers.  

As noted in Sotheby’s 1983 catalogue of the Burkhardt-Wildt collection, the subject of the illumination is extremely rare, taken from the life of Christ but illustrating the Office of the Virgin, in this case the surviving verso text of 12 lines is probably from Sext. The present cutting was one of six offered at the sale (originally Burckhardt-Wildt album ff. 34-35) whose verso texts are “consistent with the Use of Auxerre, Châlons, and Besançon, hinting at eastern French and possibly Burgundian origin”.  

Although the miniature is cropped this is somewhat redeemed by the fact that it has such an illustrious Swiss provenance from the late 18th century, belonging first to Peter Birmann (1758–1844), painter and art dealer, and then to the antiquarian Daniel Burckhardt-Wildt (1759–1819), whose highly important collection of cuttings was unknown until his descendants sold them at Sotheby’s a century and a half later.      

Daniel Burckhardt-Wildt, was a Basle silk ribbon manufacturer, connoisseur and minor artist whose family had been silk merchants from 1518. He was a member of the Künstlergesellschaft of Basel and after the French Revolution began to buy works of art through Peter Birmann, landscape painter and art dealer, who frequently visited Paris from June 1795 and from whom were acquired pictures, drawings, prints, marbles and bronzes. Birmann who specialised in medieval miniatures, he owned and sold, for example, the miniatures of Jean Fouquet’s Hours of Etienne Chevalier assembled in France the a huge album for Burckhardt-Wildt which comprised around 475 illuminated cuttings (see Christopher de Hamel's introduction noted to the 1983 Sotheby’s sale catalogue).  

Provenance  I. Peter Birmann. II. Daniel Burckhardt-Wildt, by descent through his heirs in Basel until sold Sotheby’s, 25 April 1983, lot 128, bought by: III. Pierre Berès (d.2008).

Stock Code: 250567