Wardington Hours

Item date: 15th century
Grant Value: £10,000
Item cost: £635,000
Item cost pre-decimal: NULL
Item date acquired: 2007
Item institution: British Library
Town/City: London

A lavishly illuminated Hours of the Passion, Paris, 15th cent. The manuscript is possibly a part of a Book of Hours now in the Huntington Library, San Marino. Its forty folios contain elaborate illuminated borders and eight large miniatures of stages in the Passion of Christ, executed in the exquisite style of the Bedford group of artists, so named after their patron John of Lancaster (1389-1435), Duke of Bedford, Regent of France for Henry VI.

Item Provenance
The De Courgy Family, Paris, early 18th cent.; Henry Pomeroy, 2nd Viscount Heberton (1749-1829); by descent to the Paravicini family, by whom it was sold, Christie's, 24 March 1953, lot 524, to Bernard Quaritch, from whom it was bought by Dudley M. Colman and sold at Sotheby's, 19 May 1958, lot 102, to Marlborough Rare Books for Lord Wardington (1924-2005); his sale, Sotheby's, 5 December 2006.