The Medieval Manuscripts of Gillyatt Sumner

In 2018 Mitch Fraas contacted me with a query, explaining that,

"I found myself down a rabbit hole looking for more on an English collector named Gillyatt Sumner (d. 1877). I wonder if you've run across him before? De Ricci gives him (as G. Sumner) as the provenance of two mss. one at Houghton (Ms. Lat 27) and another at LC (Ms. Ac. 271 - De Ricci vol. 1, p184, no.17). Likewise, Ker gives him in the provenance of about a dozen entries [recorded in the Schoenberg Database]"

I could not remember having seen the name before, but a bit of Googling produced a startling hit:

CHARGE OF SODOMY. – Gillyatt Sumner, an old man with white hair, who has resided at Woodmancy, near Beverley, and a young man named Crabtree, from Bradford, were charged with committing sodomy. The charge was made by a boilermaker in the employ of Messrs Samuelsons, named Jones. Holgate, who with prisoners and some others, had occupied beds on Wednesday night in a room at the Regatta Tavern, High-street, with several witnesses were examined, and the case was adjourned until to-morrow (Friday). 
(The Hull Packet and East Riding Times; issue 3989.) [1]

'Mirmellus Arnandi'

Among the bibles broken up by Otto Ege and/or Philip Duschnes is one often called the bible of 'Mirmellus Arnandi' (of which an example is shown above), produced in Paris c. 1300. Leaves were no. 14 in the famous Ege portfolio of Fifty Original Leaves.

The bible derives its name from the description of a cache of 210 of leaves sold at Sotheby's, 11 December 1984, lot 39: some of the leaves have erased inscriptions in formal gothic script the lower margin, and from those that remain partially legible, Christopher de Hamel concluded that the bible was 'Bequeathed to a Dominican Convent in 1450 by Mirmellus Arnandi, lawyer and judge', e.g. 'Ego mirmelus [sic] arnandi legum doctor et [...] Judex' on the leaf with the beginning of the book of Nahum.

Another Antiphonary Cutting from the Stroganoff Collection

A couple of weeks ago I looked at two early 16th-century Flemish miniatures from the Stroganoff Collection. In a blogpost in 2017 (with a postscript a week later) I identified a cutting from an early 14th-century Italian Antiphonary illuminated by the Master of the Brussels Initials, as being from the collection, and five years later, in 2022 I showed that other cuttings from the same manuscript were also probably once in his collection. I can add one more to the group.

The Illuminated Cuttings and Leaves of Victor Goldschmidt (d. 1933), of Heidelberg

The collection of illuminations (not to mention his complete codices, printed graphic arts, etc.) of Victor Goldschmidt [Wikipedia], of Heidelberg (shown above) is not well known. Perhaps the best known item in it was a miniature of St Gregory the Great, from an 11th-century Moralia in Job, which was published by Rosy Schilling, with a Foreword by Georg Swarzenski, Die illuminierten Handschriften und Einzelminiaturen des Mittelalters und Renaissance in Frankfurter Besitz (Joseph Baer, 1929) [PDF here], p. 3 no. 3 and Taf. IV, and is now at the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston: 

[Source]

Two More Miniatures from the Collection of Count Stroganoff

On several occasions in 2017 (here) and 2020 (here, here, and here) I blogged about illuminations from the collection of Count Stroganoff (shown above). In preparation for a visit to Stockholm next Spring, I have identified two more of his miniatures.