![THE SYMBOL OF ST LUKE, a historiated initial on a leaf from a noted Missal, in Latin, illuminated manuscript on vellum [Italy, Puglia (Bari?), late 11th century]](https://www.christies.com/img/LotImages/2019/CKS/2019_CKS_18152_0421_004(the_symbol_of_st_luke_a_historiated_initial_on_a_leaf_from_a_noted_mis_d6217463053237).jpg?w=1)
![THE SYMBOL OF ST LUKE, a historiated initial on a leaf from a noted Missal, in Latin, illuminated manuscript on vellum [Italy, Puglia (Bari?), late 11th century]](https://www.christies.com/img/LotImages/2019/CKS/2019_CKS_18152_0421_003(the_symbol_of_st_luke_a_historiated_initial_on_a_leaf_from_a_noted_mis_d6217463053228).jpg?w=1)
Details
THE SYMBOL OF ST LUKE, a historiated initial on a leaf from a noted Missal, in Latin, illuminated manuscript on vellum [Italy, Puglia (Bari?), late 11th century]
‘The manuscript is of a quality and elegance matched in its time and place only by the surviving leaves of a similar missal [in the Vatican Library]’ (Kelly, p.2).
A single leaf, c.350 x 250 mm, blind-ruled for 2 columns of 29 lines, ruled space c.280 x 200mm, written in a very fine Bari-type Beneventan minuscule, with rubrics in red, the musical parts in much smaller script and with staveless neumes, capitals with alternately red or green wash, one very large historiated coloured initial incorporating the ox, the evangelist symbol of Luke, with two panels of interlace and two biting animal heads, the verso with two large coloured initials incorporating foliage and bird heads, other initials with foliate ornament and colour washes (the outer corners repaired with vellum patches, with some overall wear and staining but still a very handsome leaf). Bound in grey buckram at the Quaritch bindery.
Provenance:
(1) Written and illuminated in the late 11th century in southern Italy, probably Puglia, perhaps Bari: ‘This Bari missal, incomplete as it is, clearly does not depend on the uses of Benevento or Montecassino; perhaps it represents aspects of the liturgy of the great city of Bari itself’ (Kelly, p.11).
(2) Only four leaves are known to survive from the volume, doubtless recovered from use in a binding, including three that are textually consecutive; all four were bought from a ‘continental dealer, ca. 1970’, by:
(3) Bernard Rosenthal (this one was his ‘I/218’), who in 1971 sold one to Philip Hofer (still at Harvard) and one to Bernard Breslauer, and kept the other two until 1987.
(4) Bernard Quaritch, Bookhands IV, cat. 1128 (1990), part of no 8 (‘from a superb illuminated Beneventan Missal’).
(5) Schøyen Collection, part of MS 63.
Sister-leaves:
For the four known leaves see: (i) the present leaf; (ii) G. Freuler, The McCarthy Collection, 2018, no 1; (iii) the Beyond Words exhibition catalogue, Boston, 2016, no 17 (Houghton Library, MS Typ 701); and (iv) W. Voelkle and R. Wieck, The Bernard H. Breslauer Collection of Manuscript Illuminations, 1992, no 55. Their textual contents are listed, and the liturgical peculiarities analysed by Kelly, 2009.
Script:
This leaf is written in the rare ‘Bari-type’ sub-style of Beneventan minuscule, practised mainly in Puglia and Dalmatia. It is characterised especially by the fact that the minims are written more like Caroline minuscule than the Montecassino type of the script, in which minims have a thick-thin-thick appearance, like stacked lozenge shapes. Apart from this, most letter-forms are similar, except for the shape of the letter ‘c’, which looks like a large reversed ‘3’.
E.A. Lowe, The Beneventan Script, 1914, p.150 (revised edn. by V. Brown, 1980), provides the most detailed discussion of Bari-type Beneventan script, although there is also an unpublished 1961 dissertation, summarised in E.B. Levy, ‘The Bari Type of Beneventan Script: Manuscripts from Apulia’, Harvard Studies in Classical Philology 66 (1962), pp.262–65.
Bibliography:
V. Brown, ‘A Second New List of Beneventan Manuscripts (II)’, Mediaeval Studies, 50 (1988), at p.602 no viii.
T.F. Kelly, ‘Fragments of a Notated Missal in “Bari-Type” Beneventan Script’, in Lingua mea calamus scribæ: Mélanges offerts à madame Marie-Noël Colette, 2009, pp.207–22.
‘The manuscript is of a quality and elegance matched in its time and place only by the surviving leaves of a similar missal [in the Vatican Library]’ (Kelly, p.2).
A single leaf, c.350 x 250 mm, blind-ruled for 2 columns of 29 lines, ruled space c.280 x 200mm, written in a very fine Bari-type Beneventan minuscule, with rubrics in red, the musical parts in much smaller script and with staveless neumes, capitals with alternately red or green wash, one very large historiated coloured initial incorporating the ox, the evangelist symbol of Luke, with two panels of interlace and two biting animal heads, the verso with two large coloured initials incorporating foliage and bird heads, other initials with foliate ornament and colour washes (the outer corners repaired with vellum patches, with some overall wear and staining but still a very handsome leaf). Bound in grey buckram at the Quaritch bindery.
Provenance:
(1) Written and illuminated in the late 11th century in southern Italy, probably Puglia, perhaps Bari: ‘This Bari missal, incomplete as it is, clearly does not depend on the uses of Benevento or Montecassino; perhaps it represents aspects of the liturgy of the great city of Bari itself’ (Kelly, p.11).
(2) Only four leaves are known to survive from the volume, doubtless recovered from use in a binding, including three that are textually consecutive; all four were bought from a ‘continental dealer, ca. 1970’, by:
(3) Bernard Rosenthal (this one was his ‘I/218’), who in 1971 sold one to Philip Hofer (still at Harvard) and one to Bernard Breslauer, and kept the other two until 1987.
(4) Bernard Quaritch, Bookhands IV, cat. 1128 (1990), part of no 8 (‘from a superb illuminated Beneventan Missal’).
(5) Schøyen Collection, part of MS 63.
Sister-leaves:
For the four known leaves see: (i) the present leaf; (ii) G. Freuler, The McCarthy Collection, 2018, no 1; (iii) the Beyond Words exhibition catalogue, Boston, 2016, no 17 (Houghton Library, MS Typ 701); and (iv) W. Voelkle and R. Wieck, The Bernard H. Breslauer Collection of Manuscript Illuminations, 1992, no 55. Their textual contents are listed, and the liturgical peculiarities analysed by Kelly, 2009.
Script:
This leaf is written in the rare ‘Bari-type’ sub-style of Beneventan minuscule, practised mainly in Puglia and Dalmatia. It is characterised especially by the fact that the minims are written more like Caroline minuscule than the Montecassino type of the script, in which minims have a thick-thin-thick appearance, like stacked lozenge shapes. Apart from this, most letter-forms are similar, except for the shape of the letter ‘c’, which looks like a large reversed ‘3’.
E.A. Lowe, The Beneventan Script, 1914, p.150 (revised edn. by V. Brown, 1980), provides the most detailed discussion of Bari-type Beneventan script, although there is also an unpublished 1961 dissertation, summarised in E.B. Levy, ‘The Bari Type of Beneventan Script: Manuscripts from Apulia’, Harvard Studies in Classical Philology 66 (1962), pp.262–65.
Bibliography:
V. Brown, ‘A Second New List of Beneventan Manuscripts (II)’, Mediaeval Studies, 50 (1988), at p.602 no viii.
T.F. Kelly, ‘Fragments of a Notated Missal in “Bari-Type” Beneventan Script’, in Lingua mea calamus scribæ: Mélanges offerts à madame Marie-Noël Colette, 2009, pp.207–22.
Special notice
No VAT on hammer price or buyer's premium.
Brought to you by
Eugenio Donadoni