FEATURES ARCHIVE

The Arcana Collection has set a new benchmark of exceptional quality, rarity and provenance in the world of illuminated manuscripts. Eugenio Donadoni, Junior Specialist in Medieval and Renaissance manuscripts, discusses the significance of this extraordinary collection and the success of this sale.

The sale of the third and final part of the Arcana Collection of Exceptional Illuminated Manuscripts was a resounding success, both from a sales perspective, with strong prices and competitive bidding, and a curatorial one, with innovative display and scholarly cataloguing appealing to connoisseurs internationally.

Rarely does a single sale see such a striking concentration of works by the greatest masters of manuscript illumination, spanning the length and breadth of Europe from the 13th to the 16th  centuries: from Jean Colombe to the Mazarine Master, the school of Fouquet to ‘the greatest master in the art of illumination in all of Europe’, Simon Bening. As with the first Arcana sale, the provenance of this rich group was also particularly noteworthy: The Great Hours of Galeazzo Maria Sforza is a sumptuous display of the magnificence of a Renaissance prince; The Lutheran Prayerbook of Countess Dorothea von Mansfeld, the only known work of Sebastian Glockendon, belonged to Gräfin Dorothea von Mansfeld, herbalist to Martin Luther. 

The obvious artistic overlap between these gems of illumination and Old Master paintings, drawings and prints was all the more tangible at the pre-sale view, with the manuscripts exhibited only steps away from Albrecht Dürer’s magnificent impression of Adam and Eve, Goya’s Hutiles Trabajos and Michelangelo’s studies of male nudes. As one work of art complemented another, the manuscripts were energised by the juxtaposition with the modern technology used in the galleries to bring them to life, from the projections and custom-made displays to the online interactive specialist analyses and articles.

Exceptional prices were achieved for the two keynote lots, The Great Hours of Galeazzo Maria Sforza (£1.22 million, the highest price ever achieved at auction for an Italian Book of Hours) and the Imhof Prayerbook (£1.61 million), reflecting their position as highpoints of Renaissance book production.