RARE Manuscript Fascimiles Il Libro delle Ore Ross. 94 Vatican Book of Hours Bruges Flemish Art 1983 Jaca Book Belser Verlag Mint w/Box

Facsimile edition of the Book of Hours, Vatican Codex Rossianus 94, published 1983 by Jaca Book Milan and Belser Verlag Zurich as Volume LVI of the Vatican Library's Codices e Vaticanis Selecti series, commissioned under Pope John Paul II.

Limited to 900 numbered copies. First edition. Out of print at publisher. Complete set with both volumes and original clamshell box.

Condition: Mint — pristine throughout, no markings, no stamps, no signs of use. As new.

The original manuscript is held in the Biblioteca Apostolica Vaticana, Vatican City. Produced in Bruges around 1500 for an unknown wealthy patron, it is one of the finest surviving examples of the Ghent-Bruges school of manuscript illumination — the last and greatest flowering of Flemish medieval book art, produced just as printing was ending the manuscript tradition forever.

Palm-sized and made for private devotion, the original contains 39 full-page color miniatures surrounded by trompe-l'oeil borders of flowers, insects, gemstones, and charming drôleries on 240 parchment folios. Three anonymous Flemish masters contributed the illumination, working in an elegant Gothic Rotunda script. The facsimile reproduces the original at full scale in full color.

Provenance of the original begins in the 19th century with the collection of Maria Luisa Carlota of Parma (1802–1857) — Bourbon princess, Infanta of Spain, and former wife of Maximilian, Hereditary Prince of Saxony — who together with her second husband, Roman collector Giovanni Francesco De Rossi (1796–1854), assembled one of the great private manuscript libraries of the era: approximately 1,200 manuscripts and 8,500 printed works gathered in Rome from the mid-19th century. The combined royal arms of Maria Luisa Carlota — Bourbon-Parma/Spain quartered with the arms of Saxony from her first marriage — are stamped in gilt and color on the facsimile's brown leather binding, a direct reference to the dynastic provenance of the Rossiana collection. Following the deaths of both De Rossi and Maria Luisa Carlota, the collection passed to the Society of Jesus, who transferred it to the Biblioteca Apostolica Vaticana in 1922, where it became the Rossiana — the shelfmark Ross. 94 designating this manuscript's place within it.

This is the 1983 Jaca Book first edition with Italian-language commentary by Luigi Michelini Tocci — the primary scholarly edition, predating the 1996 Belser second edition with expanded German commentary. Both editions are out of print.

Publisher: Jaca Book, Milan / Belser Verlag, Zurich

Series: Codices e Vaticanis Selecti, Volume LVI

Clamshell box: 20 cm × 14 cm × 6 cm. Green cloth exterior. Marbled paper interior.

Facsimile volume: 10 cm x 8 cm x 3 cm, 240 pages, gilt-stamped brown leather, all-edge gilt. Marbled end papers.

Commentary volume: 18.5 cm × 12.5 cm, 42 pages, green cloth with gilt label

*All sales are final. Please read carefully and message with any questions before purchasing — additional photos available on request.