TWO LEAVES FROM THE LLANGATTOCK BREVIARY, illuminated by Giorgio d’Almagna and assistants, in Latin, illuminated manuscript on vellum [Italy (Ferrara), 15th century (between 1441 and 1448)]

TWO LEAVES FROM THE LLANGATTOCK BREVIARY, illuminated by Giorgio d’Almagna and assistants, in Latin, illuminated manuscript on vellum

[Italy (Ferrara), 15th century (between 1441 and 1448)]

two leaves, c. 265 × 190mm, written in two columns of 30 lines in fine gothic script, with numerous rubrics in red, the text of one (a) comprising the second to sixth readings for the feast of St Jude (28 October) followed on the verso (framed as the front) by the start of for the vigil (30 November), of All Saints, with a large illuminated initial ‘E’(cce ego Iohannes vidi alterum angelum ascendentem …; Behold, I, John, saw another angel ascending); the recto of the other (b) with the end of the Common of Apostles and the verso with the beginning of the Common of many martyrs: ‘In nat. plurimorum martyrum. Sermo sancti Augustini espiscopi. Lectio .I.’, continuing as far as the 4th reading, the recto with a large illuminated initial and three-sided border, ‘I’(n psalmo diximus domino deo nostro …); both leaves have an illuminated border to the left of every column of text, two-line initials in gold on backgrounds alternately pink or blue, and one-line initials alternately gold with blue penwork or blue with red penwork; minor thumbing, generally in fine condition; in double-sided giltwood frames.

PROVENANCE

1. LIONELLO D’ESTE (1407–50), MARQUIS OF FERRARA, DUKE OF MODENA AND REGGIO EMILIA (1441–50): the Breviary from which these leaves come has been convincingly identified with a manuscript commissioned by Lionello for which detailed documents survive; begun in 1441 and finished in 1448, the documents name several illuminators, the scribe, the binder, and numerous other details of the commission: for the most recent discussion, with references to earlier literature, see Avril, 2011.
2. Reputed to have been despoiled by soldiers during the Peninsula War, and therefore presumably in a Spanish or Portuguese library by the early 19th century; later owned by:
3. John Rolls (1776–1837): inscribed with a note by his grandson: ‘Bought by my grandfather … Supposed to have been Peninsular loot. The pictures cut out by soldiers. J[ohn] A[llan] Rolls. 1882’; with the bookplate of John Etherington Welch Rolls (1807–1870), son of John and father of John Allan (1837–1912), who became 1st Baron Llangattock in 1892; by descent within the family, until said to have been found in a chest (together with the Llangattock Hours, now at the J. Paul Getty Museum), and sold at Christie’s, 8 December 1958, lot 190; bought by:
4. Goodspeed’s Book Shop, of Boston, who broke it up almost immediately; the first quire was acquired by Philip Hofer in 1959 and is now Harvard, Houghton Library, MS Typ. 301 (Wieck, 1983), while the rest is scattered in collections around the world.
5. Mark Lansburgh (1925–2013), teacher, hand-press printer, and book collector (on whom see Dutschke, 2024): the present leaves were acquired from him in March 1989 by:
6. The Boehlen Collection, Bern, MS 1411

ILLUMINATION

The accounts for the payment of the Breviary make it exceptionally well documented, and allow it to be recognised as a major monument of precisely dated and localised Ferrarese illumination. From these documents we learn, for example, that Francesco de Codigoro was the scribe and Giorgio d’Alemagna (d. 1479) was the principle illuminator: he claimed to have illuminated 53 quires himself, but because of the enormity of the project, in 1443 he enlisted the help of Bartolomeo de Benincà, citizen of Ferrara; Matteo de’ Pasti, a pupil of Pisanello who is recorded working in Venice in 1441, decorated ten quires in 1445–46, and Guglielmo Giraldi was paid in 1447 for contributing to a single quire. The most comprehensive recent analysis is by Federica Toniolo (2008).

REFERENCES

R.S. Wieck, Late Medieval and Renaissance Illuminated Manuscripts 1350–1525 in The Houghton Library (Cambridge, MA, 1983), p. 130 and fig. 74.

F. Toniolo, ‘Il lungo viaggio del Breviario di Lionello d’Este tra le due sponde dell’Atlantico’, in Medioevo: arte e storia, Atti del Convegno internazionale di studi, Parma, 18–22 settembre 2007 (2008), pp. 564–77.

F. Avril, et al., Les Enluminures du Louvre: Moyen Age et Renaissance (Paris, 2011), no.45 pp. 84–88.

C. Dutschke, ‘Mark Lansburgh: Collector and Seller of Medieval Manuscripts’, in Medieval Manuscripts and Their Provenance: Essays in Honour of Barbara A. Shailor, ed. by A.S.G. Edwards (Woodbridge, 2024), pp. 116–31.