Descriptions of One Manuscript or Two?

[Digital Library@Villanova University; Source]

One of the challenges of tracing a manuscript from owner to owner is to verify that it is indeed a single manuscript whose path you are following, not two or more similar ones. We can exemplify this problem by looking at the catalogue descriptions of the Villanova manuscript discussed in a recent post.

Other Tuns as Part of a Rebus

It occurs to me that a suggestion in the previous post will only seem plausible if the reader knows how common it was for a tun to form part of a rebus, so here are a few more examples:

Rings + tun = "Ringeston" (as discussed here).

A tun in a press = Preston

A Scribal and Illuminated Rebus?

Among the digitized manuscripts at Villanova University, PA, is a very small (approx.100×70mm) 14th-century English copy of some of Augustine's works, with a single illuminated page at the beginning:

[This and other images: Digital Library@Villanova University; Source]

The thing that strikes me as most unusual about this first page is the lower border, with foliage sprouting from what looks like a hole in the side of a wooden barrel:

"Ancient Illuminated MSS in the Library at Calveley"

My interest was aroused by the description of of a 19th-century album that will be sold next week, whose catalogue description does not have an image:

I asked the auctioneer to send me some photos, and I have just received the images. The title-page is shown above.

A Painter from Avignon in 1436

Last week Christie's had an auction the medieval manuscripts of Maurice Burrus (1882-1959), several of which have interesting provenances.

Lot 2, for example, was an attractive 12th-century Gospel Book from Montmajour, just outside Arles, south of Avignon:

[Source]

(Not) A New Lewis Caerleon Manuscript

Some months ago, as part of the work I am doing for Corpus Christi College, Oxford, I looked at their MS 234, a handsome English 15th-century copy of Euclid's Elements. Among its especially pleasing features are its original binding, precisely-drawn geometrical figures, and one illuminated page:

An Addendum to "Adalbert Freiherr von Lanna (1836-1909) of Prague"

The previous post was inspired by a leaf that was sold as lot 384 in the Lanna auction at Stuttgart in 1910. Anne Korteweg has kindly contacted me to let me know that lot 385 in the same sale -- apparently from the same manuscript -- is now at the Rijksprentenkabinet at the Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam:

RP-T-1948-381 [Source]