Part of a second selection of manuscripts entered for sale by the Dutch businessman and collector Joost R. Ritman to benefit the Bibliotheca Hermetica Philosophica, the library that he founded in Amsterdam in 1957, it was the high spot of a 36-lot sale held by Sotheby’s on June 19.
The sale raised a premium-inclusive £6.34m to add to the £3.83m raised for the library last summer, and the two-vol. Brandenburg Hours, in which 43 of the 51 larger miniatures are the work of Simon Bening, the most famous manuscript painter working in northern Europe at the time, brought an anonymous bid of £2.70m.
The Brandenburg Hours, which made £1.1m when sold as an Astor manuscript at Sotheby’s in 1988, also features 72 full illuminated borders, of which 42 form full-page pictorial schemes enclosing the text.
Buyer’s premium: 20/15/10 per cent
The Hours of Albrecht of Brandenburg number £2.7million
UK: This article looks at a magnificent Book of Hours illustrated for one of the wealthiest prelates and patrons of the arts in 16th century Europe, Cardinal Albrecht of Brandenburg.
