The Hoe Album II: More Cuttings Illuminated by Nebridio

Last week we saw that two cuttings illuminated by Frate Nebridio passed from the Ottley sale in 1838, to Robert Hoe, and eventually to the Houghton Library, where they form part of MS Typ 979.

Looking through the thirteen cuttings that comprise MS Typ 979, I found that eight of the others have also been attributed to Frate Nebridio [1]. This raises the possibility that they all passed together, as a group (via as yet unidentified intermediary owners), from Ottley to Hoe. So can any of these other Nebridio cuttings be identified in the Ottley sale catalogue?

The Hoe Album, I: Frate Nebridio

Following my blogpost in September in which I virtually reunited a cutting of an illuminated border at Harvard, with an historiated initial at the Fitzwilliam Museum illuminated by the Master of the Murano Gradual, I had  a series of email exchanges with Bill Stoneman, which have now borne unexpected but very satisfying fruit.

The Murano border is one of a series of illuminated cuttings at Harvard with consecutive shelfmarks and a common recent provenance, described in detail below. A few of these cuttings have previously been associated with William Young Ottley (especially those with "from the Cathedral of Como" inscriptions, like those discussed in this post), but I can now show that all of them come from the 1838 Ottley sale.

A Fake in Detroit: An Addendum

Regular readers will remember the fake miniature of Abelard (shown above) about which I posted a year ago , and mentioned again in February this year.

It was given to Detroit in March 1925:

"Given by Mrs. John S. Newberry (23 March 1925)."

I can now take the provenance back a little further.

Leaves from a Book of Hours Repurposed as an Armorial: An Addendum

In August last year I blogged about some 15th-century Flemish full-page miniatures, made for inclusion in a Book of Hours or Prayerbook, whose blank rectos had been re-used in England to make an armorial of English families. 

I knew of two leaves at the Free Library, Philadelphia (one of which is shown above), and the blog was prompted by the appearance of a third at a provincial English auction. 

The outer borders of ivy-leaves, and especially the inner frames around each miniature, are unusual. The frame is very narrow at the sides but is wider at the top and bottom, in red and blue respectively, each panel being divided in two by a thin vertical gold line, and with gold quarter-circles at the corners.

I've just found one more.

Sotheby Manuscripts at Sotheby's

When I first worked for the Bodleian, in the mid-1990s, I became aware of an issue that still causes trouble. 

If, hypothetically, the Bodleian had acquired a manuscript on the third day of a five-day sale which began on 1 January, they recorded it as having been acquired on 3 January. Of course this is completely accurate, and represents a historical fact. A problem arises, however, because most people would cite the auction only by its start-date, in this case 1 January, which creates an apparent contradiction. It can then cause a reader some trouble, until s/he realises that the "1 January" catalogue and the "3 January" acquisition both refer to the same auction.

What I realised clearly for the first time is that most people conflate two very different and separate things: on one hand there is an event in the past, the auction, and on the other hand here is a bibliographical entity, the auction catalogue, that may not represent the historical event with complete accuracy.

The Dispersal of the Miniatures of Édouard Kann

Édouard Kann [Source]

The catalogue of the collection of miniatures of Édouard Kann has 46 entries for Western manuscripts (some entries describe multiple items) and 6 for Persian; only a few items are not reproduced among the 48 high-quality plates. It was written by Amédée Boinet and published in 1926 in an edition of 250 numbered copies:

Amédée Boinet, La collection de miniatures de M. Edouard Kann (Paris: Les Beaux-Arts, 1926).

Ever since 1997, when I bought a copy of the catalogue (deaccessioned from the library of the Institute of Fine Arts, NYU), I have had an interest in the collection and its fate, but until now I did not know how or when it was dispersed.

A Second Holford Cutting in Lisbon

 

Gulbenkian Museum, M.35

Before doing the promised review of the new catalogue of the Gulbenkian Museum's illuminated western manuscripts, today I'll continue the  theme from last week, by discussing a Gulbenkian cutting from the Holford Collection, shown above, whose pre-Holford provenance is still uncertain. It depicts St Benedict, enthroned, surrounded by three sainted popes and five other saints.