Saturday, 7 December 2019
The Manuscripts of T. O. Weigel, I:
The Catalogues
Some years ago, in part payment for some work I had done for a dealer, I acquired two copies of the auction catalogue of manuscripts of Theodor Oswald Weigel (1812-1881), bookseller and art historian of Leipzig, but best known as a collector and publisher of 15th and 16th-century prints.
Sunday, 1 December 2019
Psalter Cuttings at Princeton and Yale, II
Attentive readers will have noticed several things about the cuttings shown in the previous post. First, the text on the backs of the initials demonstrate that the parent manuscript was written in very short lines (typically only three to five words per line). It must therefore have been written in two columns, as is confirmed by the back of this Yale cutting:
and this Princeton cutting:
In both cases, we can see the end of some lines of text which form part of a left-hand column, and parts of flourished initials that introduced verses in an adjacent right-hand column. (In both these cases, therefore, we know that the illuminated initial on the other side was in the right-hand column).
13th-century Psalters are rarely written in two columns.
Sunday, 17 November 2019
Initials From an Early 13th-Century English Benedictine Psalter, at Princeton and Yale
I have always had a particular interest in 12th- and 13th-century English Psalters (including this one), so on my first visit to the Princeton University Art Museum, in about 1992 -- long before digital cameras were generally available -- I took special interest in a group of five illuminated initials including the one above. It appears to show a hare with big ears, and a fox with a bushy tail, playing a game of chess or checkers. [1]
Friday, 8 November 2019
Things To See In Madrid
Last weekend I went to Madrid for the first time, so today I will stray away from the usual provenance theme to mention a couple of other manuscript-related things I saw while there.
First, there is currently -- and until 4 January -- an exhibition at the Biblioteca Nacional of the Hours of Charles V, which was recently disbound for conservation:
First, there is currently -- and until 4 January -- an exhibition at the Biblioteca Nacional of the Hours of Charles V, which was recently disbound for conservation:
Saturday, 2 November 2019
Google's Handwriting Recognition
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"a silent warning" |
The next several paragraphs may seem irrelevant, but bear with me.
Saturday, 26 October 2019
A Bible in Philadelphia [III]: The Bible of Cardinal Pedro Gómez de Barroso?
Something that I did not mention in the previous two blog posts, and is also not mentioned in any of the online descriptions of the Bible, is what appears to be a sort of itinerary, in a 14th-century hand:
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[Source] |
- Intravit C...am(?) .lvj. de me(n)sis(?) / madij
- Fuit t(ra)nslat(us) ad eccl(es)iam / Coli(m)brien(sis) [i.e. Coimbra] .lviij. xxv Aug(us)ti
- Fuit t(ra)nslat(us) ad Ulixbon' [i.e. Lisbon] / lxiiij .xxiij. Julij
- May 1356
- 25 August 1358 -- Coimbra
- 23 July 1364 -- Lisbon
Saturday, 19 October 2019
A Bible in Philadelphia, With a Spanish(?) Provenance [II]
In the post two weeks ago, I traced the so-called Patou Bible (Philadelphia, Free Library, MS Lewis E 242) back through an 1877 auction catalogue to the Cistercian abbey at Loos, which owned it by the early 18th century, and discussed a 15th-century owner, Jean Patou. But I deliberately omitted the book's earlier provenance, which I'll begin to address today.
Wednesday, 16 October 2019
Italian Illuminated Cuttings and Leaves in Berlin
Hot on the heels of my last post, news of another new catalogue of cuttings and leaves, this time in the Berlin Kupferstichkabinett, and focusing on Italian illuminated items.
Monday, 14 October 2019
Medieval Manuscripts at Keio University
[The Patou Bible at the Free Library, Philadelphia, about which I blogged a week ago, turns out to be more complex and interesting than I had anticipated, so the next posts will have to wait a bit longer. In the meantime, readers may be interested to learn of a new publication.]
Thanks to Richard Linenthal I recently became aware of an exhibition of manuscripts belonging to Keio University, and thanks to the kindness of Takami Matsuda, I have a copy of the catalogue. A detail of the front cover, showing the English title, is above.
Saturday, 5 October 2019
A Bible in Philadelphia, Attributed to the Grusch Atelier [I]
I have always struggled to understand the fundamental book about 13th-century Parisian illumination: Robert Branner, Manuscript Painting in Paris during the Reign of Saint Louis: A Study of Styles (University of California Press, 1977).
I have had to grapple with it again in earnest during the past couple of years, while cataloguing leaves in the McCarthy Collection, several of which have been attributed (wrongly, in my opinion) to artists and ateliers defined and named by Branner, including "The Dominican Painter", "The Leber Group", "The Atelier of the Vienna Moralized Bibles", and "The Johannes Grusch Atelier".
The latter atelier has been the subject of an extended exchange on Twitter this week, and in the course of trying to understand Branner's definition of the style(s), I went looking for digitized versions of the manuscripts he cites. One of them is a Bible at the Free Library, Philadelphia (MS Lewis E 242), recently digitized as part of the Bibliophilly project.
I have had to grapple with it again in earnest during the past couple of years, while cataloguing leaves in the McCarthy Collection, several of which have been attributed (wrongly, in my opinion) to artists and ateliers defined and named by Branner, including "The Dominican Painter", "The Leber Group", "The Atelier of the Vienna Moralized Bibles", and "The Johannes Grusch Atelier".
The latter atelier has been the subject of an extended exchange on Twitter this week, and in the course of trying to understand Branner's definition of the style(s), I went looking for digitized versions of the manuscripts he cites. One of them is a Bible at the Free Library, Philadelphia (MS Lewis E 242), recently digitized as part of the Bibliophilly project.
Sunday, 29 September 2019
The McCarthy Collection, Vol. II, Now Available
I have numerous blogposts in my drafts folder, but none that are ready to publish without some more work, so this weekend I will instead take the opportunity to advertise that a catalogue of illuminated manuscript leaves and cuttings, containing much new provenance information, was published a few weeks ago.
Basic details: 305×250mm; 248 pp.; 63 catalogue entries describing nearly 100 items; all reproduced in colour, often including the reverse side, and often with sister-leaves and/or comparanda in other collections.
ISBN 9781912168132.
It can be ordered from the publisher here, but does not seem to be available yet through Amazon or other sources.
Sunday, 22 September 2019
The Name of the Rose (1986) - An Addendum
Since writing the previous post, I had another look on YouTube, and found a clip of the film in which Baskerville and Adso first visit the Library. All the manuscripts appear in the first 2 minutes of this 4½-minute clip:
This scene includes a few more shots of open manuscripts, mostly the same as the ones seen in the scriptorium scene.
This scene includes a few more shots of open manuscripts, mostly the same as the ones seen in the scriptorium scene.
Saturday, 21 September 2019
Medieval Illuminated Manuscripts in The Name of the Rose (1986)
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Sean Connery, as William de Baskerville, inspecting a manuscript |
[The 4½-minute scene should play if if click this YouTube link, with the usual options to pause, watch full-screen, etc.; but you don't have to watch it in order to understand what follows]
Here is an overview of the scriptorium, as seen when the heroes of the story (the Franciscan William de Baskerville, played by Sean Connery, and his young protégé Adso of Melk, played by Christian Slater) first enter the room:
Saturday, 14 September 2019
A Fake in Detroit
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[Source] |
Thursday, 12 September 2019
Kay Sutton (1943–2019)
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Kay outside the Musée Cluny, Paris, in 2007 |
Saturday, 7 September 2019
The Brölemann Price-Code: A Partial Decipherment?
A recent post caused me to look again at the question of the price-code use by at least one of the Brölemanns, and found in their manuscripts.
In my much older post about the Brölemann catalogues, I wrote that If enough examples could be collected, it ought also to be possible to decipher the Brölemann price-code. From the images we have, it is apparent that x=0, and other numbers are represented by c, d, l, q, s, t, and u.
Saturday, 31 August 2019
Ernst Detterer's Copy of the De vita activa et contemplativa
In a footnote to the previous post I mentioned that Ernst Detterer owned a 29-leaf portion of a 15th-century Italian copy of Prosper of Acquitaine (now re-attributed to Julianus Pomerius), De vita activa et contemplativa, on paper, of which one leaf is at the Newberry Library:
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[Source] |
Saturday, 24 August 2019
An Unnoticed Arrivabene Leaf at the Newberry Library
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Chicago, Newberry Library, Case MS 137, no. 7 (detail) |
The heading is written in very elegant epigraphic capitals, in lines of blue, red, olive green, and dark purple inks. These colours, alternating in this order, are characteristic of the famous Paduan scribe Bartolomeo Sanvito (also discussed in this blogpost).
Here is an example of a heading by Sanvito, using the same colours in the same sequence, but with the addition of lines of gold (another of his favoured colour-sequences):
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Escorial, MS F.IV.11 (detail) |
Saturday, 17 August 2019
Leaves from a Book of Hours Repurposed as an Armorial
The leaf above was sold this week in a provincial English auction. The miniature presumably represents St Barbara holding a miniature tower, or Mary Magdalene holding her ointment-jar, but it is in poor condition, so it is hard to judge its artistic merit. It is on a leaf that was originally blank on the other side, and was thus doubtless the verso of single-leaf miniature, prepared in the southern Netherlandish manner for insertion into a Book of Hours.
Very strangely, the blank recto was later used for drawing the arms of various English families, identified in 17th(?)-century captions:
Saturday, 10 August 2019
Another Brölemann "Catalogue B" Description
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[Source] |
Wednesday, 7 August 2019
A Sighting of The Myrour of Recluses
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[Source] |
Sunday, 4 August 2019
The Mortuary Roll of Lucy of Hedingham
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[Source] |
The first of a series of consecutive fixed-term contracts I had at the British Library was a post in 2002 to select medieval manuscripts with specific regional associations, for inclusion in a digitisation project called "Collect Britain" [defunct website], whose purpose was to emphasise that the Library's collections are relevant to the whole of the British Isles, and to make selected items accessible to everyone online, and not just those who, by living in London, could more easily visit the Library in person. It was a wonderful experience, that allowed me to consult a couple of thousand manuscripts that I would otherwise never have had a reason to look at.
One manuscript that particularly fascinated me is the Mortuary Roll of Lucy de Vere, first prioress of the Benedictine nunnery at Castle Hedingham, Essex. The nunnery was founded by the de Vere family, Earls of Oxford, whose family seat was Hedingham Castle [Wikipedia] [1]. The first part of the roll is shown above, with a detail here:
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BL, Egerton MS 2849 |
Sunday, 28 July 2019
A Manuscript in Lyon, Dated 1469
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Lyon, BM, MS 624 (541) [Source] |
Regular readers will recognise this strange decoration, which combines full and half fleurs-de-lys alternately blue or gold, with dense filigree penwork in red and blue, from a recent post:
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Sims collection, Maryland (detail) |
Saturday, 20 July 2019
Otto Ege's "Chain of Psalms" Manuscript: Another Update and a Cautionary Tale
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Notre Dame, cod. Lat. b. 11. (Image courtesy of the Hesburgh Library, University of Notre Dame) |
David Gura kindly sent me an image of the first page of the Notre Dame manuscript (shown above), which allows us to see the decorated initial, and the incipit with abbreviations that von Scherling expanded incorrectly:
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detail |
Sunday, 14 July 2019
Otto Ege's "Chain of Psalms" Manuscript: An Update
I sent a tweet about yesterday's blogpost, and within a few hours I had a response from David Gura, who published a catalogue of the Notre Dame manuscripts in 2016, and recognised the von Scherling-Ege manuscript in my blogpost as Notre Dame cod. Lat. b. 11:
Saturday, 13 July 2019
Otto Ege's "Chain of Psalms" Manuscript
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[Source] |
Saturday, 6 July 2019
A Leaf from an 11th-Century Giant Bible in Washington, DC
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[Source] |
Sunday, 30 June 2019
Cuttings by the Monza Master [III]
In a previous post I reproduced the image above, which is close in style to the large series of cuttings attributed to the Master of Monza, and I suggested that it came from the same series, cut from a collection of saints' lives.
I also suggested that it might be the "small cutting with a princess saint in an initial V in the Enrico Frascione collection in Florence" from a "broken-up choirbook", mentioned by Gaudenz Freuler in a 2013 catalogue.
Saturday, 22 June 2019
A Dismembered Book of Hours Once Owned by Count Durrieu: A Second Postscript
In a recent post (and a first Postscript) I discussed a now-dismembered Book of Hours that was described in a Sam Fogg catalogue in 1991. I now realise that it was still intact several years later, in 1997, when it was offered by Les Enluminures, Catalogue 6: Heures Me Fault de Nostre Dame / A Book of Hours, Too, Must Be Mine (Paris, 1997), no. 13, from which the images above and below come.
Saturday, 15 June 2019
A Miniature of St Augustine Absent From the Rosenwald Collection Catalogue
There have been a number of catalogues in the past decade or two dedicated entirely or primarily to collections of single leaves and cuttings, and I have increasingly come to think that the best model for how such catalogues should be presented is, in fact, one of the earliest, namely Carl Nordenfalk et al, Medieval & Renaissance Miniatures from the National Gallery of Art (Washington, DC, 1975):
Sunday, 9 June 2019
A Cryptic Book Label Identified
A reader sent me this image and asked if I knew whose book label it is, suggesting that the letters in the central monogram might be read as "Daume". I didn't recognise it, but by Googling the unambiguous part, "EX LIB HEN RY", I was quickly able to find the answer.
Saturday, 1 June 2019
A Dismembered Prayerbook from the Collection of Henry Yates Thompson: An Addendum
In a previous post I collected together a few miniatures of a dismembered prayerbook, and in another post I investigated its provenance.
Sunday, 26 May 2019
The Date of Wellesley MS 29
In a previous post I considered the weird initials added (in the 19th century, I believe) to Wellesley MS 29, a manuscript that has previously been dated "s. XVex/ XVIin", or "c. 1500", presumably partly on stylistic grounds, and partly due to a calendrical diagram on fol. 13r, which has the year "1500" written above it, using the medieval forms of arabic numerals (shown above).
Saturday, 25 May 2019
Another "Spanish" Forger?: An Addendum
A follow-up from last weekend's post.
The interface for the digitized Wellesley manuscripts allows browsing of thumbnails, a slideshow of larger (but still small) images, and downloading of individual high resolution images, but no easy way (as far as I can tell) of scrolling/browsing high resolution images. For this reason I have not looked through all the images properly.
Saturday, 18 May 2019
Another "Spanish" Forger?
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Wellesley College MS 27, fol. 15v (detail) [source] |
I also suspect that it is no older than the 19th century.
In April 2015, about year and a half before the Beyond Words exhibition opened, I contacted some of its organisers to suggest that the illuminated manuscript in which this miniature is found should perhaps not be included in the exhibition. I wrote:
"To me, the figures in the miniatures mostly look 19th-century, most obviously the Madonna and Child on f.15v, but I suspect that the whole miniatures, not just the figures, are modern, probably copied from a real Flemish book."This opinion refers only to the miniatures, and especially the human figures in them; the manuscript in which the Madonna and Child miniatures appear is a genuine Book of Hours, which has been attributed to "Probably Antwerp, Brabant, southern Netherlands, c. 1480–90".
Wednesday, 15 May 2019
A Dismembered Book of Hours Once Owned by Count Durrieu: A Postscript
I have belatedly realised that the Olschki catalogue cited in the previous post is available online, and provides several images of the miniatures of the manuscript, some of them with unusual iconography:
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Diptych of Christ Blessing and the Virgin, fols. IIv-IIIr |
Saturday, 11 May 2019
A Dismembered Book of Hours Once Owned by Count Durrieu
The image above shows a leaf of a manuscript that has puzzled me for some time. I don't recall having seen script and decoration like this anywhere else.
Saturday, 4 May 2019
The Nationality of the Sées Missal
A month ago I blogged about a Missal at Sées, datable to c.1332 (plus or minus 5 years) which I claimed to be English. Since then I have spoken to two specialists of English illumination, who both agreed that the script is English, but expressed scepticism about whether the decoration is English as well. So before posting a blog about the contents of the Missal, which has been sitting in my "Drafts" folder for some weeks, I feel I ought to address this issue.
Sunday, 28 April 2019
The Pontifical of John of Neumarkt (d. 1380)?
For about 20 years I have wanted to solve a puzzle concerning a bifolium from a grand Pontifical, later used as binding-waste. This week I had a breakthrough.
One side of the bifolium is shown above, and the other below. It is substantially complete, though creased and somewhat damaged (as binding waste almost invariably is), yet impressive due to its large size: about 39cm high by 57cm wide, the ruled space of the text in two columns of 21 lines being about 25cm by 18.5cm.
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