Soranzo - Canonici - Sneyd

Today I learned that there will be an exhibition in Florence next year, at the Galleria dell'Accademia, called La fortuna dei Primitivi: Tesori d'arte dalle collezioni italiane fra Sette e Ottocento, dedicated to 18th- and 19th-century Italian collecting of "primitives".

It will include a section about Lord Ashburnham and another about Matteo Canonici. This reminds me of a manuscript that sold at Bonham's in London a year ago:

The foliation in the middle of the lower margin shows (not mentioned in the Bonham's catalogue) that it comes from the collection of Jacopo Soranzo (1686-1761):

Philip Bliss (1787-1857) and Rebekah Bliss (1749-1819)

Earlier this year a fine Flemish Book of Hours with an interesting  early 19th-century provenance was sold in London. A faint pencil inscription on a flyleaf:

Inscription, as it appears in normal light

at first appeared to read:

"Missal of considerable 

delicacy and beauty.

cost Mr. Bliss [£25 ??]"

This immediately suggested Philip Bliss, the well -known Oxford antiquarian, book-collector, and member of the Roxburghe Club. 

Catalogi bibliothecarum antiqui

I recently found that Gustav Heinrich Becker's Catalogi bibliothecarum antiqui (Bonn, 1885) is available online.

It provides transcriptions of more than 130 pre-1200 lists of books / library catalogues, some very short, some very extensive. Many had been printed before, and references to the earlier editions are cited.  Here, for example, are the pages with the catalogue for Durham, preceded by the end of Arras, and followed by the beginning of Bec:

Fritz Hasselmann (d.1894)

In my first blog-post two years ago I described the mark of Fritz Hasselmann, as found on several items at the Chester Beatty Library, Dublin.

Since then Lugt's Marques has gone online, so we now have far more information about Hasselmann, the sales of his collections, and a photographic example of his ink-stamp. Here are two more examples, one with the end of my thumb, as a guide to its scale:

The online Lugt entry for Ed. Schultze (also discussed in my old blog-post) has no new information, but includes a colour reproduction of his ink stamp. Another example online comes from the Cooper-Hewitt Museum.

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):

The Church Congress Exhibitions

I occasionally encounter a manuscript with a circular paper label printed in blue with the words "Church Congress Exhibition", or occasionally "Ecclesiastical Art Exhibition", and a number added by hand:

  

Ashburnham Appendix and other catalogues

In response to the post about the Ashburnham-Libri manuscripts catalogue, one reader asked me about catalogues of the other Ashburnham manuscripts. The catalogues privately printed by Ashburnham himself are still not all available online, but each is represented online by at least one copy of the relevant auction catalogue.

Barrois
Catalogue of the Portion of the Famous Collection of Manuscripts, the Property of the Rt. Hon. the Earl of Ashburnham, Known as the Barrois Collection ... Which Will be Sold by Auction ... Sotheby, Wilkinson, and Hodge ... 10th day of June, 1901, and Four Following Days: 

• a lightly annotated copy at the Robarts Library, University of Toronto
• a copy at Cornell University

There are also various related publications, notably: