Sunday 28 August 2016

The Burlington Fine Arts Club Exhibition, Winter 1926-27 [Part II]

In the previous post, we left the BFAC exhibition looking at a leaf hanging on the wall just inside the door to the Gallery. In the first exhibition-case in the Gallery was the set of six full-page miniatures illuminated by William de Brailes, lent by Chester Beatty, and now at the Fitzwilliam Museum (MS 330; all six are online here), including the one shown above, which is no. 2 of those listed below:

Wednesday 24 August 2016

The Burlington Fine Arts Club Exhibition, Winter 1926-27 [Part I]


Most readers of this blog will be aware of the landmark 1908 exhibition of illuminated manuscripts held by the Burlington Fine Arts Club (BFAC) in 1908. In a previous post, I discussed two lesser-known exhibitions of illuminated manuscripts held by the BFAC, in 1874 and 1886.

Even less well known that either of these two exhibitions, however, each of which is commemorated by a printed catalogue, is an exhibition held during the winter of 1926 to 1927, for which there is no published catalogue.

There is, however, a typescript draft catalogue which only survives in a single copy, as far as I am aware. It was in the BFAC archive transferred to the library of the V&A Museum when the BFAC was wound-up in 1951.

Saturday 13 August 2016

Boerner Auction CX, Addendum

Following on from a recent post, I have realised that lot 51 in the Boerner catalogue, later lot 32 in the Lanna-Prag catalogue, was later owned by Edouard Kann and Robert Lehman, and is now in The Met, NYC, where all this provenance is recorded.
[Source]
But, to judge by their online description, The Met is apparently unaware that another of its leaves was also in the Boerner auction, as lot 17, where it was attributed to 13th-century France:
Like the Psalter leaf now at Harvard, it was apparently unsold in the auction, and re-offered by Boerner in a fixed-price catalogue the following year:

It was given to The Met in 1939 by Sarah Gibbs Thompson Pell, and is now attributed to Swabia, c.1400:
[Source]
The priest's scroll reads:

"Prespiter Albert(us) hui(us) libri tibi munus. | Dat pia virgo p(re)ces p(ro) me peto ferte sorores"



And the nun's reads "Mater mis(eri)c(or)die miserere mei. Liugardi."

The Met description and a web-search suggest that the leaf is unpublished, apart from the Boerner catalogues, which is surprising for such an interesting and unusual miniature.

Saturday 6 August 2016

The Burckhardt-Wildt Apocalypse Miniatures


I have now published the second page of ongoing work-in-progress to track down the most recent known whereabouts of leaves and cuttings from various manuscripts, and reproductions of them.

This new page currently concerns the Burckhardt-Wildt Apocalypse. A link to it also appears under the "Membra disiecta" heading on the right-hand navigation panel.