Saturday 16 May 2020

The Raphael Stora Archive II:


In a previous post I looked at two illuminated leaves once owned by the dealer Raphael Stora; today I briefly mention two more.

[Source]

One of the digitised negatives in the Stora archive shows the framed confection in the image above.  Closer-up, we can see that the borders are made up of Italian cuttings apparently by Attavante
and the central miniature is Flemish, apparently by Simon Marmion:

Once we work out what it is, we can trace its provenance as follows:
  • Frédéric Spitzer (1815-1890) (about whose manuscripts I really should do a blog post at some point); said to be in his Catalogue, vol. V (1892), p. 149, no. 4 (which I cannot verify at present), and, according to de Ricci (see below), in his sale the following year: 17 April 1893, lot 3262, although the identification seems tenuous:
  • Jean Dollfus [on whom see Samuel Rocheblave, Un grand collectionneur alsacien, Jean Dollfus (1823 à 1911) (Strasbourg, 1912)]; his sale, 1 April 1912, lot 140.
  • Arthur Sambon, whose collection of illuminated manuscripts leaves and cuttings was acquired by:
  • Léonce Rosenberg: described and reproduced in the de Ricci catalogue of his collection (1913, no. 97, pl. III):
    although I cannot identify it in Rosenberg's 1920 sale catalogue.
  • It is now at the Toledo Museum of Art

Their website does not include an image or provenance, but one can deduce from the bibliography cited that it was acquired in 1939 from the collection of Michael Dreicer, New York.
~~~

A second manuscript leaf represented in the Stora Archive is this "antiphonary sheet 16th cent.":
[Source]
It was sold anonymously at Sotheby's, 6 December 1988, lot 17, illustrated on the front cover:

It was bought at the 1988 sale by Bernard Breslauer; and included in his 1992-93 Morgan Library exhibition (Catalogue, no. 30), and in his sale at Christie's, 11 December 2002, lot 11:
 

The arms in the lower margin allow the leaf to be attributed to the patronage of Pedro Gonzales de Mendoza (1428-95) [Wikipedia], Cardinal of Spain.


Among other leaves and cuttings said to come from the same choirbook(s) is this one, sold at Sotheby's 22 June 1993, lot 43:

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