18. St. Eustace, single leaf rom a Book of Hours, illuminated manuscript on vellum, large miniature of St. Eustace, standing in the middle of a stream, with his two sons on either bank being carried off respectively by a lion and a wolf, in an elaborate landscape including a river with ships, hills and fields, in an arched compartment, below a large initial ‘’M’ in red, decorated in gold, and 4 lines of text, in a border of foliage and flowers, in colours and gold, with roundels and lozenges and including a large bird pecking a blue flower, with one wing extending into the text, 15 lines of text on verso, in an elegant lettre bâtarde, 2 initials in gold, decorated in red or blue, fore-edge with border of foliage and flowers in colours and gold, little marked, 120 x 80 mm., [? Rouen, ca 1480].
est. £1000 – £1500
St Eustace, one of the Fourteen Holy Helpers and the patron saint, among other things, of hunting, more commonly depicted with a stag having a crucifix between its horns, suffered a series of disasters, including the theft of his property, the death of his servants, the kidnapping of his wife, and the loss of his sons in the scene depicted here. He was eventually roasted to death in the bronze statue of a bull.
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