Buchinger, Matthias | A Buchinger palimpsest

Buchinger, Matthias
Fine autograph calligraphic Ten Commandments, with the Apostles' Creed and the Lord's Prayer signed ("Matthew Buchinger")

Manuscript on vellum (152 x 120 mm), Edinburgh, 23 April 1723; light stains and spotting, chiefly marginal. Tipped to a mat board and matted, framed, and glazed with Plexiglas.

This manuscript is essentially a larger version of the micro-calligraphic Decalogue executed by Buchinger in Dublin (see lot 111). Written during a tour of Scotland, the present manuscript (signed with Buchinger's standard formula) again combines the texts of the Apostles' Creed and the Lord's Prayer with a more prominent transcription of the Ten Commandments, all within a historiated architectural frame. The name YHWH again appears, but the cartouche reserved for the Greek THEOS is unaccomplished.

Buchinger seems to have scraped off the simple linear design underneath the Commandment tablets, creating a patch of palimpsest, on which he inscribed a brief family tree for the purchaser of the drawing: "John Thomson, merchant of Edinburgh & Elizabeth Ronaldson married on the 22 April 1702 & following children," followed by the names and birthdates of the couple's ten begotten.

REFERENCE:
MB, fig. 46; Wordplay 62

Condition Report:
Condition as described in catalogue entry.

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