Illuminated Manuscript.- Leaf from the Beauvais Missal, with three animal-headed drollery creatures,...
Illuminated Manuscript.- Leaf from the Beauvais Missal, with three animal-headed drollery creatures, in Latin, illuminated manuscript on parchment, single leaf, with double column of mixed text and music in 13/14 lines (recto) and 18/19 lines (verso) of two sizes of a high grade of early gothic book hand, those with music accompanied by a 4-line red stave, capitals enclosing quatrefoil penwork tiles (some of these touched in yellow wash or red), pale red rubrics (one with “ORATIO” in ornamental capitals), three 2-line initials in blue or dark pink with white penwork, on coloured grounds with circles of gold at the edges, these leading to foliate extensions in the margin terminating in ivy-leaves (one such initial with extensions nearly the whole page in height), two large initials on recto formed from the bodies of coloured winged beasts with gaping mouths (one devouring a golden fruit), each on long and thin panel of blue or dark pink grounds with circles of gold, and with foliate extensions as before, verso with a similar animal above one of the smaller initials (with a curved body and an open mouth placed as if he is about to eat a line of text), tiny scuffs to gold in places, some offset from decoration on adjacent pages in original volume, else fresh and bright condition, 288 x 200mm, [Northern France (perhaps Beauvais or Amiens)], [early fourteenth century (probably c.1310)]
⁂ A fine illuminated leaf from the celebrated Beauvais Missal. Of all books dispersed by the self-proclaimed biblioclast Otto Ege (1888-1951), the Beauvais Missal is perhaps the most famous as well as the most visually striking. Gifted by its original owner, Roberto de Hangest, canon of Beauvais Cathedral, to the Cathedral in 1356, it remained there until the seventeenth century, whereafter much of its sale history is well documented. It was sold by Didier Petit de Meurville (1793-1873) of Lyon, in 1843 lot 354, to Henri Auguste Brölemann (1775-1854) of Lyon, when it passed by descent to his great-grand daughter, who then sold it at Sotheby's, 4 May 1926, lot 161 to William Randolph Hearst (1863-1951). It was presumably after the sale from the Gimbel Bros., New York, to Philip C. Duschnes (1897-1970), that the Missal was broken up, and a number of leaves were bought by Otto Ege in 1942 or 1943 (see S. Gwara, Otto Ege’s Manuscripts, 2013, p. 45). This leaf here offered, was no.15 of Ege's Handlist, and the other known leaves are now widely dispersed (see Gwara, pp. 122-23 for lists of these, his HL 15, and Lisa Fagin Davis’online reconstruction).
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Illuminated Manuscript.- Leaf from the Beauvais Missal, with three animal-headed drollery creatures, in Latin, illuminated manuscript on parchment, single leaf, with double column of mixed text and music in 13/14 lines (recto) and 18/19 lines (verso) of two sizes of a high grade of early gothic book hand, those with music accompanied by a 4-line red stave, capitals enclosing quatrefoil penwork tiles (some of these touched in yellow wash or red), pale red rubrics (one with “ORATIO” in ornamental capitals), three 2-line initials in blue or dark pink with white penwork, on coloured grounds with circles of gold at the edges, these leading to foliate extensions in the margin terminating in ivy-leaves (one such initial with extensions nearly the whole page in height), two large initials on recto formed from the bodies of coloured winged beasts with gaping mouths (one devouring a golden fruit), each on long and thin panel of blue or dark pink grounds with circles of gold, and with foliate extensions as before, verso with a similar animal above one of the smaller initials (with a curved body and an open mouth placed as if he is about to eat a line of text), tiny scuffs to gold in places, some offset from decoration on adjacent pages in original volume, else fresh and bright condition, 288 x 200mm, [Northern France (perhaps Beauvais or Amiens)], [early fourteenth century (probably c.1310)]
⁂ A fine illuminated leaf from the celebrated Beauvais Missal. Of all books dispersed by the self-proclaimed biblioclast Otto Ege (1888-1951), the Beauvais Missal is perhaps the most famous as well as the most visually striking. Gifted by its original owner, Roberto de Hangest, canon of Beauvais Cathedral, to the Cathedral in 1356, it remained there until the seventeenth century, whereafter much of its sale history is well documented. It was sold by Didier Petit de Meurville (1793-1873) of Lyon, in 1843 lot 354, to Henri Auguste Brölemann (1775-1854) of Lyon, when it passed by descent to his great-grand daughter, who then sold it at Sotheby's, 4 May 1926, lot 161 to William Randolph Hearst (1863-1951). It was presumably after the sale from the Gimbel Bros., New York, to Philip C. Duschnes (1897-1970), that the Missal was broken up, and a number of leaves were bought by Otto Ege in 1942 or 1943 (see S. Gwara, Otto Ege’s Manuscripts, 2013, p. 45). This leaf here offered, was no.15 of Ege's Handlist, and the other known leaves are now widely dispersed (see Gwara, pp. 122-23 for lists of these, his HL 15, and Lisa Fagin Davis’online reconstruction).
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