The Brummer Gallery Archive III: A Bohemian(?) Crucifixion Miniature

At the left edge of the page above, introduced at the top of a previous post, is a Crucifixion miniature, apparently from a late 15th-century German or Bohemian Missal:

Illuminated Manuscripts from the Collection of Christopher Cone and Stanley J. Seeger

A short post today, simply to mention that there are five illuminated manuscript items buried within the Cone - Seeger sale at Sotheby's on 30 October.

Lot 154 belongs to a group of cuttings I have been working on for some time; it belonged to John Ruskin:

Lot 157 is particularly intriguing for both its iconography and its text:

Lot 158 is charming, and potentially of some importance for its text:

The main Sotheby's sale of medieval manuscripts will be on 4 December.

The Brummer Gallery Archive II: The Budé Bible

Last week we found an illuminated manuscript classified, because of its binding, under the heading "LEATHER". The image above is a page from the "PAINTINGS" section of one of the Brummer photobooks. At first sight it looks like a jumble, and it is, but taking the images one by one, several manuscripts can be recognised. I will look at some of them, in separate posts.

The Brummer Gallery Archive I: An Antiphonary from Regensburg

[Source]

I have very recently become aware of the archive of the Brummer Gallery [Wikipedia], New York, now held by the Metropolitan Museum. Medieval manuscripts were a very small part of their business, but some of them are of great interest; I anticipate doing at least three blog posts.

A nice example is on the page above, from the Gallery's scrapbook of sold items. Under the heading "Miscellaneous - Leather" it includes five small photos of bookbindings, and three of the insides of the respective books.

Leaves from a 14th-Century Picard(?) Book of Hours

[Source]

This historiated initial is on a leaf now at The Met in New York. It comes from a manuscript several of whose leaves have appeared in dealer and auction catalogues from about 1930 to 2001.

Au Vélin d'or [II]

The other item in the 1929 catalogue that caught my eye is this:

Described as St Peter holding a key, in red green and yellow, on a leaf 26×23cm:

Au Vélin d'or [I]

I want to check an ambiguous reference to some items bought from "Barroux" in 1929 or 1930, perhaps from a catalogue no. 24. After some effort I determined that this probably refers to Robert Barroux, whose Paris bookselling firm was called "Au Vélin d'or". But copies of the catalogues are apparently very rare, to judge by records on Worldcat.

A copy of Catalogue 23, from 1929, is at the IRHT in Paris, and Hanno Wijsman kindly made a scan of it for me; the front cover is shown above. It turns out that the items I am looking for are not in this catalogue, but I recognise two other items that are included, on which I will do two short blog posts.