King David Pointing to His Mouth, historiated initial from Psalms in the Cockerell-Haddaway Bible, in Latin [France (Paris), c.1220s]

single leaf, c.215x145mm, vellum, 2 columns, 55 lines, starting ‘above top line’, c.150x100mm, containing parts of Psalms 36–43, the usual division at Ps.38 with an EIGHT-LINE HISTORIATED INITIAL, in very fine condition with wide margins preserving the prickings on three sides

(1) Henry Huth (1815–1878), bought in 1856 from Joseph Lilly; bequeathed to his son (2) Alfred Henry Huth (1850–1910); his posthumous sale in our rooms 15 November 1911, lot 645, bought by Quaritch. (3) C.H. St John Hornby (1867–1946); bequeathed by him to (4) Sir Sydney Cockerell (1867–1962), see C. de Hamel, ‘Medieval and Renaissance Manuscripts from the Library of Sir Sydney Cockerell (1867–1962)’, British Library Journal, 13, 1987, pp.186–210 at p.208 no.113; sold by him to Quaritch in January 1957. (5) Arthur Haddaway (1901–1981), of Fort Worth, Texas, see Gothic and Renaissance Manuscripts from Texas Collections, exh. cat., University of Texas, Austin, 1971, no.1 (frontispiece ill.); his posthumous sale at Christie’s New York, 25 September 1981, lot 2, bought by Bruce Ferrini and broken up within four months. More than 180 leaves of the parent manuscript are now at Ohio State University (Spec.Rar.Ms.Lat.14). This leaf was bought by the present owner from Quaritch, Catalogue 1270: Bookhands of the Middle Ages, VI (2000), no.16, with full-page colour plate and colour detail on title-page.

This is a specimen of one of the first generations of 13th-century ‘Paris’ Bibles, but unlike the large number of relatively plain examples, many of which were made for students of the university and friars of the recently founded Franciscan and Dominican Orders, this is an extremely luxurious copy, doubtless made for a wealthy prelate. The parent volume had 137 illuminated initials, 66 of them with human figures. The book is interesting for many reasons, one of which is that several very different artists contributed to its illumination. One was dubbed in 1971 the ‘Master of the Old Testament Ladies’, and one has the ‘Muldenstil’ draperies associated with the earliest Moralized Bibles. Contrary to what has been written before, however, the artist of the present leaf is not very like any of those represented in the standard reference work: R. Branner, Manuscript Painting in Paris During the Reign of Saint Louis: A Study of Styles, 1977, and therefore deserves further study.