FIERENS-GEVAERT, *The Very Beautiful Hours of John of France - Lot 154

FIERENS-GEVAERT, *The Very Beautiful Hours of John of France, Duke of Berry*... Brussels, Weckesser Frères – Leiden, A. W. Sijthoff – Paris, Maurice Rousseau, 1924. Large quarto, full ivory vellum by the publisher, titled spine, red edges. A major study devoted to the famous illuminated manuscript of the Très Belles Heures of Jean de France, Duke of Berry, one of the absolute masterpieces of early 15th-century French illumination. The work is by Hippolyte Fierens-Gevaert, a Belgian art historian and specialist in the Flemish Primitives and medieval illumination. Published under the auspices of the Société des Bibliophiles et Iconophiles de Belgique, this volume offers an in-depth analysis of the manuscript, its iconography, its historical context, and its exceptional artistic quality. It is enriched by a remarkable illustration section comprising 23 color plates reproducing the manuscript’s most famous miniatures and 14 black-and-white plates, accompanied by scholarly commentary. This copy, numbered 567, is part of a limited edition of 710 copies, and is one of the 502 copies printed on heavy vellum paper. The color reproductions, of remarkable quality for the time, attest to the advances in phototype and chromotype printing in the early 20th century. A beautiful copy preserved in its original publisher’s vellum binding. Some signs of wear and external soiling, as is often the case with this type of light-colored binding, but the interior is in very fresh condition, complete with all its plates.