At Home With Robert Forrer in 1937

[Source]

By chance I recently came across an article about Robert Forrer (who has been mentioned in several previous posts, e.g. here): Jean R. Debrix, ‘Visages d’Alsace: M. Robert Forrer’, La vie en Alsace (1937), pp. 132–36.

This includes seven photographs of the interior of Forrer's home, on the walls of which hang framed manuscript leaves and cuttings, including the one above, and these two:

Looking closely, I recognised an old friend.

A Fifth New Leo X cutting

I have written about a dismembered Missal of Leo X several times, most recently here. Browsing images of cuttings in Parisian collections I came across this initial "P", in the Musée des arts décoratifs, shown above.

The online description is vague:

A Leo X Cutting Rediscovered

Two years ago, almost to the day, I wrote a post about a cutting from the same Pope Leo X manuscript as the two cuttings at Vassar College. At that time, I only knew of it from a photograph taken in 1993, and did not know its whereabouts.

A couple of months ago I recognised it in a box of leaves and cuttings that had just arrived at Christie's and had not yet been catalogued. It has now been put online here as part of their December "Online Only" sale.

We now have access to images of both the front and back, but the I have been unable to identify the text on the back.

High-resolution images (though rather pale; the images above have been adjusted) are on the Christie's website here (front) and here (back).

Bible Leaves in Philadelphia, London, and Paris

I have recently become more interested in large Bibles. (Small ones may of course be very interesting, too, but they can be very fiddly to handle, often involve a lot of page-turning and eye-strain for very little reward, and if they are not in an institutional collection they are often unfoliated (or incorrectly foliated), which makes them difficult to describe and collate).

The Burlington Fine Arts Club Exhibition, Winter 1926-27 [Part I] -- Addendum

National Gallery of Art,
Washington DC 2013.130.1 [Source]

In the first post on the The Burlington Fine Arts Club Exhibition, Winter 1926-27, here, I made no comment about the first item described in this image:

The Free Library, Francesco Sforza, and Forgeries

Philadelphia, Free Library, Lewis E M 33:22 [Source]

Browsing the recently improved website of the Free Library, Philadelphia, I found the image above. The style is a bit weird, for reasons that will become apparent, but regular readers will recognise the lattice window and wall-covering behind the half-length pope from posts here, here, and here, and especially here.

The Burlington Fine Arts Club Exhibition, Winter 1926-27 [Part III]

Downstairs in the Writing Room seven further items hung on a wall, all lent by Capt. Edward G. Spencer-Churchill, who, as we saw in the first post of this series, was one of the members of the Exhibition Committee.

A Cutting from a Chartres Cathedral Antiphonary

Some time ago I saw a curious cutting at Maggs Bros. It was hard to know if the composition was pure fantasy, or whether the (?)processional cross and the "heraldry" might be significant.

The Burlington Fine Arts Club Exhibition, Winter 1926-27 [Part II]

In the previous post, we left the BFAC exhibition looking at a leaf hanging on the wall just inside the door to the Gallery. In the first exhibition-case in the Gallery was the set of six full-page miniatures illuminated by William de Brailes, lent by Chester Beatty, and now at the Fitzwilliam Museum (MS 330; all six are online here), including the one shown above, which is no. 2 of those listed below:

The Burlington Fine Arts Club Exhibition, Winter 1926-27 [Part I]

Most readers of this blog will be aware of the landmark 1908 exhibition of illuminated manuscripts held by the Burlington Fine Arts Club (BFAC) in 1908. In a previous post, I discussed two lesser-known exhibitions of illuminated manuscripts held by the BFAC, in 1874 and 1886.

Even less well known that either of these two exhibitions, however, each of which is commemorated by a printed catalogue, is an exhibition held during the winter of 1926 to 1927, for which there is no published catalogue.

There is, however, a typescript draft catalogue which only survives in a single copy, as far as I am aware. It was in the BFAC archive transferred to the library of the V&A Museum when the BFAC was wound-up in 1951.

The Burckhardt-Wildt Apocalypse Miniatures

I have now published the second page of ongoing work-in-progress to track down the most recent known whereabouts of leaves and cuttings from various manuscripts, and reproductions of them.

This new page currently concerns the Burckhardt-Wildt Apocalypse. A link to it also appears under the "Membra disiecta" heading on the right-hand navigation panel.

Boerner Auction Catalogue CX, 1912

On a couple of occasions in past blogs I have referred to the catalogue of an auction held in Leipzig in November 1912 by C.G. Boerner.

The MFA Jaquemart de Hesdin Miniatures

In a post almost a year ago I mentioned that one of the most interesting things about a cutting at the LA County Museum of Art, is what the text on its back tells us about the parent manuscript.

I was recently able to see the four sister cuttings at the MFA, Boston, and a Conservator there kindly relaxed the hinge of the Entombment miniature (43.215) for me, so that the reverse can now be seen and photographed more easily.

A New Cutting by the So-Called Master of Monza

In a previous post I reproduced some of the series of late 13th-century cuttings from a volume of saints' lives, formerly attributed to a Spanish artist in the circle of the Master of the Beatus of San Andrés de Arroyo in La Spezia, but now re-attributed to a Lombard illuminator.

Since then, at least one more has come back on the market, from the Zeileis collection:

[Source]

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 Cutting Attributed to Jacquemart de Hesdin in Los Angeles

A series of cutting of calendar scenes attributed to Jacquemart de Hesdin was recently sold at Christie's.

They had previously been sold as part of the collection of Daniel Burckhardt-Wildt (1759–1819), at Sotheby's, 25 April 1983, lot 100, together with three larger miniatures (lot 99), doubtless from the same parent volume:

Arthur Feldman Cuttings Awaiting Restitution

In a previous post I described the restitution of a charter to Germany, from where it had gone missing during the War. Its safe return is recounted on the blog of the Westfalen-Lippe archives. 

I show above and below images of two other items in the LostArt database, both from the collection of Arthur Feldman. According to an old Sotheby's press release (PDF here):

The Vassar Leo X Cuttings (Part III): The Parent Volume

Having demonstrated in a previous post that the Vassar (and related) cuttings come from a manuscript closely related to the Preparatio ad missam manuscript of Pope Leo X, now at the Morgan Library, we can now consider what else can be deduced about the appearance of the volume from which the cuttings came.

Part of the evidence comes from the text visible on the backs of the cuttings:

Another Leo X Cutting

I have just returned from a three-week trip to the USA (where I collected lots of material for future blog posts) which is why I missed my regular Saturday post this past weekend. Until I have time to write another full post, here is a small snippet to fill the gap.

The Morgan Library in New York has a Preparatio ad Missam manuscript closely related to the newly-identified cuttings from a Missal of Pope Leo X that were the subject of a previous post. In the Morgan's files is a note of another cutting, offered for sale in 1993 by the London art dealer Antiquus, which clearly comes from the same set:

Yet More About the Cuttings From the Bible of Pedro of Pamplona

In a recent post I discussed some of the missing cuttings of the Bible of Pedro of Pamplona, known only from old photographs.

Within a few days of that post Bill Stoneman, Curator of Early Books and Manuscripts at Houghton Library, Harvard, identified for me the present whereabouts of one of the initials I had discussed; and just a few days after that Geneviève Mariéthoz sent me news that two more cuttings have been acquired by the Bibliothèque municipale in Angers.