Sunday 30 September 2018

The Brummer Gallery Archive III: A Bohemian(?) Crucifixion Miniature


At the left edge of the page above, introduced at the top of a previous post, is a Crucifixion miniature, apparently from a late 15th-century German or Bohemian Missal:

Saturday 29 September 2018

Illuminated Manuscripts from the Collection of Christopher Cone and Stanley J. Seeger

A short post today, simply to mention that there are five illuminated manuscript items buried within the Cone - Seeger sale at Sotheby's on 30 October.

Lot 154 belongs to a group of cuttings I have been working on for some time; it belonged to John Ruskin:

Lot 157 is particularly intriguing for both its iconography and its text:

Lot 158 is charming, and potentially of some importance for its text:

The main Sotheby's sale of medieval manuscripts will be on 4 December.

Saturday 22 September 2018

The Brummer Gallery Archive II: The Budé Bible


Last week we found an illuminated manuscript classified, because of its binding, under the heading "LEATHER". The image above is a page from the "PAINTINGS" section of one of the Brummer photobooks. At first sight it looks like a jumble, and it is, but taking the images one by one, several manuscripts can be recognised. I will look at some of them, in separate posts.

Saturday 15 September 2018

The Brummer Gallery Archive I: An Antiphonary from Regensburg

[Source]
I have very recently become aware of the archive of the Brummer Gallery [Wikipedia], New York, now held by the Metropolitan Museum. Medieval manuscripts were a very small part of their business, but some of them are of great interest; I anticipate doing at least three blog posts.

A nice example is on the page above, from the Gallery's scrapbook of sold items. Under the heading "Miscellaneous - Leather" it includes five small photos of bookbindings, and three of the insides of the respective books.

Saturday 8 September 2018

Leaves from a 14th-Century Picard(?) Book of Hours

[Source]
This historiated initial is on a leaf now at The Met in New York. It comes from a manuscript several of whose leaves have appeared in dealer and auction catalogues from about 1930 to 2001.

Saturday 1 September 2018

Au Vélin d'or [II]

The other item in the 1929 catalogue that caught my eye is this:
Described as St Peter holding a key, in red green and yellow, on a leaf 26×23cm: