Otto Ege's First Manuscript

In his 2013 study of Otto Ege's medieval manuscripts (reviewed here), Scott Gwara has discussed an incomplete 15th-century Italian Book of Hours that was apparently his very first, bought in 1911. He has traced 5 single leaves and 11 bifolia in 7 different collections.[1]

In his infamous article, "I am a Biblioclast", Ege relates how he bought the manuscript for $175, bidding against Rosenbach at a Stan V. Henkels auction in Philadelphia, and how he subsequently "allowed a well-known Chicago collector (who shall be nameless) to tempt him to divide the book with him".[2] This anonymous Chicago collector is identifiable as Ernst F. Detterer (1888-1947), because at least 28 leaves of the same manuscript were later in his possession, and he knew "Other leaves belong to Otto F. Ege, Cleveland; the ms. was in a Philadelphia sale".[3]

To the 27 leaves in 7 collections known to Gwara we can now add four more leaves and one more collection: Chicago, Art Institute, Inv.no.1917.235.1-4, given by Detterer in 1917:

Chicago, Art Institute, 1917.235.3 [Source]

More on the 12th-Century Cistercian Missal Formerly Owned by Otto Ege

In a previous post I wrote about a 12-century Cistercian Missal whose leaves were dispersed by Otto Ege, in which I brought attention to a description of the book published in 1928, before it was dismembered. It was previously only known from a shorter 1948 description.

A 12th-century Cistercian Missal Formerly Owned by Otto Ege

Leaves from one of the manuscripts dispersed by Otto Ege which are most easily recognised are from a Cistercian Missal, long thought to be French or Spanish. A group of four including this leaf, for example:

was attributed in Sotheby's, 25 April 1983, lot 16, to "probably France (possibly Spain)":

Ege & Duschnes Matts/Mounts

In at least one previous post I have mentioned that distinctive card mounts ("matts" in American English) are an easy way to recognise leaves sold by Otto Ege. I have also discussed the close business relationship with Philip Duschnes.

But I had forgotten until recently that Duschnes sometimes put leaves in mounts very similar to Ege's, as these examples demonstrate:

Duschnes

Ege's 12th-Century Italian Lectionary

Looking through Erik von Scherling's Rotulus catalogue vol.IV (Winter, 1937) for the previous post, I came across a plate depicting a very familiar-looking manuscript:

Ege leaves at the Glencairn Museum

In November I visited the Glencairn Museum with Bill Stoneman. It is a fascinating place, in a charming setting in Bryn Athyn (outside Philadelphia), with wonderful collections—including medieval sculpture, stained-glass, and ivories, of high enough quality to be the subject of an exhibition at the Metropolitan Museum—and we were looked-after all day with great hospitality by our kind hosts.

Our main purpose, of course, was to see the manuscripts, of which there are about 75 leaves and cuttings, and a single codex. A few of the finest items were in the Leaves of Gold exhibition at the Philadelphia Museum of Art in 2001, and are in its catalogue.

The Early Provenance of the Beauvais Missal

Having previously discussed parts of the provenance of the Beauvais Missal in various places, it may be worth pulling all this information together in one post with what is known of its earlier provenance, with some new material.

de Ricci On Cutting Up Manuscripts

Much attention has been given in recent years to the activities of Otto Ege and his defence of book-breaking in his article "I am a Biblioclast", and the whole subject was covered in some detail by Christopher de Hamel in his Cutting Up Manuscripts for Pleasure and Profit (Charlottesville, 1993).

But one surprising defender of the practice has, as far as I am aware, been overlooked in these discussions: Seymour de Ricci (1881–1942), probably best known for his Census of Medieval and Renaissance Manuscripts in the United States and Canada (1935–37). In addition to this vast union catalogue, de Ricci also catalogued a few private collections, such as the books and manuscripts of the first Lord Amherst of Hackney (1835–1909) in 1906, and in 1913 an exhibition catalogue of miniatures belonging to the Parisian art historian and dealer Léonce Rosenberg (1879–1947):

The Beauvais Missal: A New Piece of the Provenance

Of all the manuscripts said to have been cut up by Otto Ege and now scattered around the world, none is as instantly recognisable as the Beauvais Missal, and perhaps none was as valuable when still intact. And yet, despite the lively interest in Ege and his manuscripts in recent decades, no one seems to have found out where he got it from.

Ege Leaves at Occidental College

The Ege leaves in the Occidental College collection include:

• Psalter; France, mid-13th century
• Gwara HL10
• Psalms 119:136-154
• Apparently with a pencil folio number "14"
• de Ricci, Census, II, p.1938–9, no.12, tells us that Ege had bought the manuscript in 1922 from Adler, Munich, and that before disbinding it it had only 82 leaves, containing Pss.70-150 and canticles, misbound.
• Despite being correctly attributed to France by de Ricci, Ege attributed it to Germany

Otto Ege and other leaves at UC Santa Barbara

The University of California at Santa Barbara (actually a few miles west of Santa Barbara, near Goleta) has a small but interesting collection of medieval manuscripts in their library's Special Collections department, including a Reims Book of Hours and three Bibles, which will be the subjects of future posts. 

The campus is right on the coast, making it a doubly nice place to visit:

They also have a varied collection of leaves and fragments, some illuminated. Some, but not all, were described by Christine Rose, "Medieval MS Fragments at UCSB Library", Soundings: Collections of the University Library, vol.XVIII, no.24 (1987), pp.35-59. A listing of the majority of the leaves and fragments is available online and as a PDF from here.

The most handsome leaf has an historiated initial: it shows a sainted bishop (St Clement) kneeling on (green) ground, praying to and being blessed by the Hand of God in heaven, some laymen behind him, and in front of him a sheep or lamb standing on a blue rock, with a stream of water flowing from near its raised fore-leg:

Ege Leaves at the Paris Book Fair

The Salon internationale du livre ancien, Paris, is currently underway in the impressive setting of the Grand Palais.

Among several dealers offering medieval manuscripts, Giuseppe Solmi has a significant number of leaves and fragments, many of them formerly used in bindings, but also some cut from books. Among these were at least two ex-Ege MSS.

One is the Thomas Aquinas on the Sentences of Peter Lombard, Book I, mentioned in the previous post and HL40 in the Gwara Handlist, here with a part of Quaest.1, art.1: "competit. Praeterea nihil quod pluralitatem ... cuiuslibet de ratione horum":

There is a description on the seller's website.

The other is the Aurora, Gwara HL7, also mentioned in the previous post:

Description on the seller's website.

Otto Ege Leaves at UCLA

In Scott Gwara's recent book on Otto Ege's manuscripts, he lists a single leaf at the Charles E. Young Research Library at UCLA, which comes from the manuscript that is HL1 in his Handlist (and FOL1, i.e. no.1 in the Fifty Original Leaves ... portfolios).

UCLA, Charles E. Young Research Library

He had not visited the Library (he helpfully lists as his Appendix IX the "Collections Consulted in the Preparation of the Handlist"), and presumably knew of the one leaf only from the published catalogue: Medieval and Renaissance Manuscripts at the University of California, Los Angeles, compiled by Mirella Ferrari and edited by R.H. Rouse (1991), in which it appears with its Ege provenance.

In fact there are four other previously unrecognised ex-Ege leaves in this catalogue, plus at least one more at UCLA. In Gwara Handlist order, they are:

Otto Ege's Manuscripts: Two Recent Publications

Otto Ege (1888-1951) in 1923 [source]

In the coming weeks I intend to write a series of blog-posts concerning discoveries made on visits to libraries in and around Los Angeles. In some of these collections I encountered leaves that had previously been owned by Otto Ege and, in order to write them up, I decided it would be worth getting a copy of a recent book, mentioned in a previous post:

Scott J. Gwara, Otto Ege's Manuscripts: A Study of Ege's Manuscript Collections, Portfolios, and Retail Trade, with a Comprehensive Handlist of Manuscripts Collected or Sold (De Brailes Publishing: University of South Carolina, 2013), xii + 360pp.

The book is divided into three main sections:

More on Otto Ege and His Mounts

As a result of the previous post mentioning Otto Ege, a reader has brought to my attention a new book of which I was unaware: Scott J. Gwara, Ege's Manuscripts: A Study of Ege's Manuscript Collections, Portfolios, and Retail Trade, with a Comprehensive Handlist of Manuscripts Collected or Sold (2013) available from Amazon.com:

I also thought it might be useful to post images of a couple more Ege mounts ("mats" in American English), as no such images seem to be online apart from those in the article by Barbara Shailor, cited and re-used in the previous post (excuse the dark blotches -- they are caused by dust particles inside my camera):

A newly discovered leaf written by Sanvito

Much has been written about Otto Ege in the past two decades: see, for example, the articles by Barbara Shailor, ‘Otto Ege: His Manuscript Fragment Collection and the Opportunities Presented by Electronic Technology’ (2003) (available online), and by Fred Porcheddu, ‘Otto F. Ege: Teacher, Collector, Biblioclast’ (2006) (also available online), as well as the Ege project website at Denison University.

The most recent flurry of interest in Ege has been prompted by Lisa Fagin Davis’s entertaining and informative Manuscript Road Trip blog-posts here, here, here, and here (and doubtless more will follow).

Ege had a distinctive way of ruling his mounts in red ink; this image comes from the Shailor article cited above, and is also used by Fagin Davis in one of her blog-posts:

Coincidentally, a few weeks before reading her blog-post, I was looking through a collection of leaves which were waiting to be catalogued by Christie's, London, and recognised that they are in characteristic red-ruled Ege mounts.

One of the smallest leaves (c.120×80mm) in the Christie's group contains the start of the Hours of the Cross, with a rubric and incipit in elegant capitals in alternating colours: