Bugloss and Coltsfoot, a leaf from a Herbal in Latin, manuscript on paper

A number of other pieces from the same manuscript are known, including a leaf which belonged to the late Wilfrid Blunt (cf. W. Blunt and S. Raphael, Illustrated Herbal, 1979, pl. on p.77).  Another was sold in these rooms, 22 June 1999, lot 41.  Another again was Quaritch cat.1270 (Bookhands of the Middle Ages, IV), 2000, no.62.  A fourth is described in F.G. Zeileis, ‘Più ridon le carte’, Buchmalerei aus Mittelalter und Renaissance, 2001, pp.232-35, no.85, in turn reproducing a bifolium described as having been on the London art market.  It is possible but not certain that they are all from the same fragmentary Herbal as leaves in the Städelsches Kunstinstitut in Frankfurt, Inv.Nr. 15242-4, acquired in 1929 (cf. L. Makle, Italienische Zeichnungen des 15. und 16. Jahrhunderts, 1980, pp.20-21).  They belong to a group of closely-related naturalistic herbals produced in the Veneto at the beginning of the fifteenth century, including British Library Add.MS. 41623, from Belluno in the Venetian Alps, and a very similar fragment in Add.MS. 41996, fols.112-3 (cf. M. Collins, Medieval Herbals, The Illustrative Tradition, 2000, esp. pp.279-81 and p.297, n.168).

The recto shows bugloss (echium vulgare), a tall herb with small leaves and blue flowers, related to borage.  It is sometimes called ‘oxtongue’, as in the lower right here, “lingua bovis”.  The verso shows coltsfoot (tussilago farfara), sometimes also ‘assesfoot’, as here “vel Assera, id est bachara”.  The text describes how the leaves can be ground up as a medicine for headache and earache and how the root is edible and helps diseases of the head and eyes and induces sleep. 

Herbals are among the rarest of medieval secular manuscripts, doubtless because they were consulted hurriedly in medical crises and in proximity to liquids.