Leaf from Duke Albrecht's Table of Christian Faith: The Fall of Satan

This illuminated manuscript is a document of the first importance in the history of Dutch manuscript illumination and contains an important medieval Dutch devotional text. The Tafel van den Kersten ghelove is a compendium of Christian knowledge written by a learned Dominican, Dirc van Delf. The text is in two parts, one for winter, one for summer. This manuscript is of the winter part and is incomplete, omitting the prologue and chapters 13, 14, and 35-57. The arms of the Bavarian counts of Holland and the kneeling owner on fol. 1r indicate that this manuscript was the actual copy prepared for the dedicatee of the text, Albrecht of Bavaria, Count of Holland, from the original text of his chaplain, and is therefore to be dated to 1404 at the latest, when Albrecht died. The manuscript contains 165 folios and thirty-five historiated initials.

Provenance

Provenance (from the French provenir, 'to come from/forth') is the chronology of the ownership, custody, or location of a historical object.

Albert, Duke of Bavaria and Count of Holland (1389-1404), Utrecht, ca. 1404-1405, by commission; Gruel and Engelman, Paris [date and mode of acquisition unknown] [no. 93]; Henry Walters, Baltimore, 1931, by purchase; Walters Art Museum, 1931, by bequest.