Bible, in Latin, manuscript on vellum [Italy (Tuscany, perhaps Florence), second quarter of the twelfth century]

a very large bifolium, each leaf 528mm. by 365mm., double column, 50 lines in a fine rounded late Carolingian minuscule (praegothica textualis), Joel 2:5-end, Amos, prologue (Stegmüller 512, 13 lines only) and 6:11-end, and Obadiah, prologue (Stegmüller 516, 5 lines only), headings in red uncials, opening and closing of each book in uncials touched in yellow, two large decorated initials, one 6-line and one 11-line, both in yellow and burgundy-red with painted leafy foliage on multi-coloured grounds, the larger initial enclosing red interlacing panels within its body, minor wear and small stains from reuse as a wrapper for documents dated 1570, faded sixteenth-century notes on outermost pages

provenance

Sold in our rooms, 22 June 1999, lot 7; Schøyen MS 2857.

text

The first of three leaves here from Italian giant (or 'Atlantic') Bibles, a phenomenon disseminated first from Rome in the late eleventh century, and especially fashionable in twelfth-century Umbria and Tuscany; cf. W. Cahn, Romanesque Bible Illumination, esp. pp.143-54, and, now, L. Yawn, 'The Italian Giant Bibles', The Practice of the Bible in the Middle Ages, ed. Boynton and Reilly, 2011, pp.126-56.

 

The script and initials of the present bifolium are very close to those of manuscripts made for the monastery of San Salvatore a Settimo, near Florence (founded in tenth century by Pope Gregory IX). These may even be in the hand of two manuscripts from that community, now Rome, Bibl.Naz., Sessor.cod.5 and 6 (cf. K. Berg, Studies in Tuscan Twelfth-Century Illumination, 1968, nos.141-2, pp.308-10, figs.81-88). The monastery, which became the most important Cistercian house in Tuscany, assembled an important library, which was dispersed during the sixteenth century.