A Postscript to: A Psalter Leaf at Harvard

A few months ago I wrote a post about a leaf at Houghton Library, with a miniature of the Baptism of Christ on one side and a Beatus initial on the other, in which I identified it as one of the leaves sold anonymously by Gustav Nebehay at Sotheby's in 1926.

Only later did I realise that this conflicted with the account of its provenance as published in 2010, which implies a direct line of ownership to Houghton from an auction in 1912, with no mention of the 1926 auction:

"Sold at auction in Munich in 1912 to Edgar Huidekoper Wells (1875-1938), it was acquired by George J. Dyer for the Fogg Art Museum (1927.21) before being transferred to Houghton Library in 1990"

with a footnote detailing the 1912 auction: C.G. Boerner, Leipzig, Auction CX: Manuscripte und Miniaturen des XII. bis XVI. Jahrhunderts, Handzeichnungen des XV. bis XVII. Jahrhunderts, Versteigerung ... 28. November 1912, lot 15; the image above is taken from this catalogue.

An Unrecognised York Breviary in New York

Earlier this year I catalogued a Missal of the Use of York, one of only a dozen known to survive, with an interesting provenance, owned by someone who wanted to sell it to a public institution. Maggs handled the deal and everyone involved is happy with the result: it is now at Lambeth Palace Library.

In the process of cataloguing it I became familiar with the features that distinguish the Use of York calendar from the much more common Use of Sarum, as outlined by Richard Pfaff, The Liturgy in Medieval England: a History, 2009, pp.445–62.

While browsing Digital Scriptorium (from which all the images below are taken) in advance of a recent visit to the Grolier Club, New York, I noticed that their MS 3 has most of these features.

The Litany of the Psalter and Passion Sequences Written by Pietro Ursuleo

I have written a few times before about an interesting manuscript written by the scribe Pietro Ursuleo. Today I found a reproduction of a leaf that I had not seen before, from its litany of saints [1]:

A Fourth Leo X Cutting

I'm too busy to do proper blog-posts at the moment, but here's a recent find, relating to the previous posts here, here, and here.

From Maggs, European Miniatures and Illumination: Bulletin No.6 (London, n.d. [between 1966 and 1971]), no.44

A Lavishly Illuminated 13th-Century Psalter-Hours Made for a Nun

There is a 13th-century Psalter from which leaves appear on the market with some frequency.[1] It is easily recognisable by several unusual features. For example, throughout the text there are unusually large initials (4 lines in height) most of which are historiated:

A Dismembered Italian Ferial Psalter

Those of you who subscribe to the Manuscripts on My Mind (MoMM) Newsletter (and if you don't, I recommend that you do) will know about St Louis University, MSS 55a and 55b; Susan L'Engle brought attention to these two leaves in MoMM issue 8 (PDF here):

A Dispersed Copy of John of Wales's Communiloquium

Leaves of a fine copy of the Communiloquium or Summa Collationum of John of Wales (alias John Waleys / Joahnnes G[u]allensis) are to be found in a wide variety of collections, and they occasionally appear on the market.

One framed leaf, at Occidental College, provides information about their provenance, otherwise unavailable.

On the back of the frame is an old typescript label:

A Leaf of Pietro Ursuleo's Psalter-Passion Sequences in Eagle Rock

The small collection of medieval leaves in Special Collections in the Library at Occidental College in the Eagle Rock area of Los Angeles has yet more interesting items to offer.

Among them is a leaf from a Psalter with Passion Sequences, written by the humanistic scribe Pietro Ursuleo of Capua (d.1483).

The recto contains the text of Psalms 58:11-18:

and the verso continues with the last two words of Psalm 58; a long titulus to Psalm 59; and the text of Psalm 59:1-10:

A Leaf from a Fine English Psalter, c.1200

Occidental College has an extremely appealing leaf of an English Psalter of circa 1200, containing Psalms 20:1-21:6:

The fact that the Psalm 21 initial is enlarged (three lines in height, instead of Psalm 20's two-line height) suggests a Benedictine connection: Psalm 21 was one of the Benedictine divisions of the Psalms, being the first Psalm said at Matins on Sundays.

The leaf recognisably comes from a very handsome but somewhat defective volume of 129 leaves offered by Maggs Bros., Catalogue 1262: Illuminated Leaves and Historical Documents  (Christmas, 1998), item 7, and again in European Bulletin, no.23: Illuminated Miniatures, Manuscripts, and Single Leaves 1000-1900 A.D., Catalogue 1366 [December, 2004], item 1, with a colour reproduction:

The Maggs description reports that it was previously Christie's, 2 July 1975, lot 290, when it had "140 leaves (including one replacement leaf at the beginning)".

Of the leaves that had been removed from the volume between 1975 and 1998 were:

• Maggs Bros., Bulletin 12, no. 25
• Maggs Bros., Bulletin 13 (July 1986), nos. 32, 33
• Maggs Bros., Bulletin 15 / Catalogue 1103, no. 55
• Maggs Bros., Bulletin 22 / Catalogue 1249 [April 1998] no. 4, with reproduction. Pss.17:39-18:7
• Sotheby's, 17 June 1997, lot 20 (a)

EDIT 25 April 2014

I have just noticed that the volume was sold at Sotheby's, 23 June 1998, lot 45, with a description listing several single leaves that had been extracted since 1975.