On a visit to the Houghton Library in 2018 I went through a box of miscellaneous single leaves, containing all sorts of interesting items. One is a Czech Antiphonal leaf, of which a detail is shown above.
In 2016 I wrote a couple of blogposts about Adalbert Freiherr von Lanna (1836-1909) of Prague, and leaves from his collection (here and here). Back then I had some difficulty locating copies of the sale catalogues, but they are now digitised and online, including that for 6-11 May 1910:
Looking at it this week, one entry in particular caught my eye:
"387. Ein Blatt aus einem grossen Missale. Am linken Rande gegen die Mitte ein Edelmann in ganzer Figur, dabei die Inschrift: ,,Jacob Hanack Wlet Tech Bil Malo Wan XXXVI Leta Pany 1576,” unten Hirten mit Schafen. 58×33.
In Farben und Gold auf Pergament."
Whenever I see a catalogue description that includes something like a colophon or other transcribed inscription I Google it, to see if I can find its present location. The quoted inscription looks like gibberish to me, but with the help of Google Translate I later learned that "MALO WAN LETA PANY 1576" = "malowan leta pane 1576", i.e. "painted A.D. 1576", and the mention of "Jacob Hanack" with the year 1576 allowed me to identify it as a leaf I photographed at Harvard five years ago. You can get a sense of its very large size from the 6-inch / 15cm black ruler I placed next to its upper left corner in this image:
Harvard, Houghton Library, MS Typ 273 |
Turning back to the recto, Jacob is in the left margin, surrounded by the words and date recorded in the auction catalogue:
The historiated initial shows Jacob Wrestling with the Angel (Genesis 32:24):
[Update, 23 April 2023:] As Farley Katz kindly reminds me in the comments below, the leaf was in the Hachette sale in Paris in 1953, lot 41. (I had in fact already realised this when I first drafted this blogpost, and then somehow failed to mention it!). Here is the title-page and relevant description:
I presume that the 1955 Houghton exhibition catalogue meant "Hachette" when it wrote "Chadenat sale (Paris, 1953)".
Great portrait of Jacob Hanack! You may already have seen this, but La Bibliofilía, Vol. 56, No. 1 (1954), pp. 60, 77-78, recorded a sale on Dec. 16, 1953: “Une vente sensationnelle de manuscrits enluminés de livres imprimés des XVe et XVIe siècles et de riches reliures armoriées. La collection André Hachette.” This leaf was no. 41, described as “Feuillet d'un Antiphonaire tchèque du XVIe s. Beau portrait en pied de Jacob Hanack à l'âge de 36 ans avec les armes de la corporation des vignerons de Prague: 60.000 Frs.”
ReplyDeleteI am an idiot -- I forgot to mention this in the blogpost! I will now add it :-)
DeleteWonderful—thank you for sharing! Terrible about the dismembering, of course. These elaborate illuminations are typical of Utraquist liturgical manuscripts of the 16th century, and some are indeed dated (often also naming, as here, the individual[s] who paid for the copying or illumination; incidentally, "w letech"=at the age of). This is an antiphon for rain (i.e. "pro pluvia," as it would be rendered in a Latin ms.—"za desst a za czas" as written here), and probably is a translation of a pre-existing Latin chant, with the original melody in its local use retained. Cheers!
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