Lot 120

Choirbook, in Latin, illuminated manuscript on vellum [Italy (Bologna), c.1310]

Estimate

10,000 - 15,000 GBP

bidding is closed

Description

Vellum

51 leaves (plus 7 paper leaves added later), 390mm. by 252mm., complete, collation: i^{6, ii-iv^{8, v^{2, vi^{10, vii^{9 (last a cancelled blank), main text with 8 lines of black ink in a good late gothic bookhand with music on 4-line red stave, capitals touched in red, rubrics in red, one-line initials in red or blue with elaborate penwork to contrast,}}}}} three historiated initials in colour on burnished gold grounds, with elaborate coloured border decoration (fols.1r, 7r and 12r; see below), with some smudges and scuffing to gold but overall in good condition, some thumbing throughout, some lines overwritten, some cockling and trimmed at top (with losses from border decoration), else fair condition, early limp vellum

Catalogue Note

text

The volume contains the Mass for the feast of Corpus Christi (fol.1r); the Office for the same feast (fol.7r); Lections and readings for the same (fol.32r); and a Litany (fol.44r). There are additions of fourteenth-century music on fol.1r and 43r, and fifteenth-century music on fol.31rv, and at the end some seven paper leaves contain sixteenth- to eighteenth-century chants (including one for the feast of St. Petronius, a fifth-century bishop of Bologna).

illumination

The historiated initials and their borders of angular bars and simple multi coloured acanthus leaf sprays and bezants are close to the work of the early fourteenth-century artist, Nerio Bolognese (active 1310-25, d. by 1320; cf. A. Conti, La miniatura Bolognese, 1981, pp. 59-65, F. Todini, Una collezione di miniature Italiane, 1993, no. III pp. 22-25, and Robert Gibbs, 'Towards a history of earlier 14th century Bolognese illumination: little known manuscripts by Nerio Bolognese and the Hungarian Master', Wiener Jahrbuch für Kunstgeschichte, 47-8, 1993-94, p.211-2). The figure in supplication in the initial on fol.1r is markedly close to that of another two initials on cuttings attributed to this artist, one of which was sold in our rooms, 22 June 1999, lot 38, and the other offered by Maggs, Selection of Illuminated Manuscripts, 2006, no.4. Other cuttings from the same series are Munich, Staatliche Graphische Sammlung, nr.32/2-4 (U. Bauer-Eberhardt, Die italienischen Miniaturen des 13.-16.Jahrhunderts, 1984, pp.70-71, pls.90-92). If, as seems likely, these cuttings are from the same set as the present manuscript, then this manuscript has some importance as apparently the only volume to survive intact.

The initials comprise: (i) fol.1r, 'C' enclosing a kneeling tonsured saint, before Christ and an altar, 80mm. by 78mm., with border decoration on two sides; (ii) fol.7r, a man in red robes kneeling before Christ as he gives him communion, 38mm. by 43mm., border on three sides; (iii), fol.12r, Christ seated before a blue curtain holding a book, border on one side.