Lot 25

Two fifteenth-century calendars, in Latin and French, illuminated manuscripts on vellum and paper

Estimate

3,000 - 5,000 GBP

bidding is closed

Description

2 calendar volumes, (a) small humanistic calendar with additional texts, 8 paper leaves, 202mm. by 148mm., complete, collation: i^{8, written space 165mm. by 95mm., single column, 34 lines in red-brown and black ink in an early humanist hand, rubrics in purple and green, some letters touched in yellow, initials in red-brown, green, and purple, trimmed at top removing title from a few leaves, else in excellent condition, nineteenth-century paper endleaves and limp parchment binding; (b) calendar from a Book of Hours, 12 vellum leaves,} 130mm. by 85mm., complete, collation: i^{12, written space 77mm. by 45mm., single column, ruled in pink ink for 16 lines of an accomplished lettre bâtarde in liquid gold, blue, and burgundy-red, 'KL' initials in liquid gold and blue with penwork to contrast, first and last leaves somewhat worn, corner of first leaf missing, parchment binding with gilt-tooling}

Catalogue Note

text

Item (a) is in an accomplished humanistic hand, and was written by a scholar of the second half of the fifteenth century who had interests in calculation and astrology. It may well have always been an individual volume. It begins with a detailed Descriptio subsequentis kalendarii (description of the following calendar), and as it explains, the calendar has adaptations to allow the reader to calculate where the particular day lies within the solar calendar, chart the passing of the various phases of the zodiac, and through the additional line added horizontally across the base of the tables, to work out the correct parts of the ferial office to sing at the various hours of the day as well. This is followed by a short digest of the principal work of the Greek scholar Claudius Ptolemaeus (c. 90-c. 168 AD), called here in the rubrics Mathematica, Geometra and Astro[nom]ia, but given its more common Greek name, the Almagest, in the text. It is the only surviving comprehensive ancient treatise on astronomy. The numbers in the text most probably refer to the first major publication of an epitome of the work, that of Georg Peurbach and Johannes Regiomontanus in 1462. After a short digest, the present scribe then gives a list of thirty-four 'wisdoms' extracted from the text, each beginning with a delicate coloured initial. Item (b) is from a Book of Hours of some quality. It was perhaps made in Paris in the third quarter of the fifteenth-century for a local patron: Ste Genevieve in gold for 3 January.