Lot 15

The Circumcision of Abraham and Isaac, and the Battle of the Four Kings and Five Kings, on cuttings from a illustrated Old Testament translation in verse, in German, manuscript on paper

Estimate

3,000 - 5,000 GBP

bidding is closed

Description

two cuttings, (a) The Circumcision of Abraham and Isaac from Genesis 17:26, 105mm. by 84mm., the foreground containing two priests in light brown and red robes, in attendance of Abraham, who sits on a marble block with his clothing pulled up and his legs splayed to expose his genitals, one priest steadying his shoulders, another holding his penis and cutting the foreskin, in the background two further priests in blue and green robes doing the same to his infant son Isaac, laid down on thin modern paper but 13 lines of text in German in a fifteenth-century hand visible with back lighting, (b) The Battle of the Four Kings and Five Kings from Genesis 14:9, 99mm. by 84mm., as a medieval battle scene with armoured knights and crowned kings struggling and stabbing or spearing each other, three kings lying on the ground bleeding , one with his crown fallen from his head, also laid down on modern paper but 9 lines visible on verso and remains of a 30mm. deep margin, the words 'daz volkch von ysraha[l]' visible in the third line from the top, both trimmed to edge of scene but in excellent condition, in gilt frames with red velvet mounts

Catalogue Note

These illustrations are of excellent quality, with sharp detail and expressive faces. The first is of an extremely rare scene, the act of circumcision. They are from the same manuscript as 75 other fragments, all trimmed in the same fashion as these here, now in the Kupferstichkabinet in Berlin (Beschreibendes Verzeichnis der Miniaturen – Handschriften und Einzelblätter – des Kuperferstichkabinetts der Staatlichen Museen Berlin, 1931, items 4095-4169, pp. 195-8; acquired by them in 1848), and should fit into the sequence there between items 4099, depicting the Fall of Adam and Eve, and 4101, depicting Abraham and the Pharoah. The text on the reverse of item 4116 there makes in clear that the original manuscript was a translation in fumf tawsent vers (5000 verses). Other cuttings are recorded in the Czeczowitzka collection in Vienna (ex Geiger and Licht, and written up by O. Benesch in the Jahrb. der Wiener kh. Slgn, 1928, p. 73), and P. Graupe, cat.24 (1930), and from there to a Berlin artdealer and in part to J. Seligmann.

The cuttings have been identified on a number of occasions (most recently by Otto Pächt) as Austrian in origin, on the basis of stylistic comparisons to panel paintings and stained glass. They are of identical width and very similar height, and must come from a codex which had illustrations regularly inserted into spaces left in the columns of text (for a close comparison see the fifteenth-century manuscript of Der Renner by Hugo von Trimberg, now Heidelberg Univ. Bibl. Cod pal. Germ. 471, reproduced in A. Boeckler, Deutsche Buchmalerei der Gotik, 1959, pl. 46).