拍品專文
PROVENANCE:
1) The identity of the original owner and that of the extremely accomplished French writing-master are now unknown (both were probably present on the missing leaf).
2) Dr. Ernst Weil (1891-1965), antiquarian bookseller of Munich and London.
SCRIPT AND DECORATION:
It is notoriously difficult to attribute unsigned calligraphy to a particular writing-master, since the script usually aims to represent a formal ideal rather than to betray the quirks of an individual hand. It was suggested to the present owner by the late Berthold Wolpe, the author of an account of Beauchesne in A.S.Osley's Scribes and Sources 1980, that the calligrapher of this manuscript was John de Beauchesne of Paris, who in 1570 had given "the Elizabethans of England their first native printed writing-book." If the attribution is correct the manuscript must be localised to London (Beauchesne's first stay there was from 1565 to the late 1570s). Beauchesne was one of the greatest writing-masters in late 16th-century Europe (he died in 1620), and THE VERY HIGH QUALITY OF THIS CALLIGRAPHIC MANUSCRIPT could only increase his reputation. There is no direct evidence that this French translation of the short sayings of the Seven Wise Men of Greece was in England at an early date, but an attribution to one of the leading writing-masters in France would be even more difficult to make (the manuscript is too late for Jacques de La Rue or Pierre Hamon and too early for Jean de Beaugrand or Lucas Materot). IMPORTANT SIXTEENTH-CENTURY CALLIGRAPHY IS OF THE GREATEST RARITY AT AUCTION.
1) The identity of the original owner and that of the extremely accomplished French writing-master are now unknown (both were probably present on the missing leaf).
2) Dr. Ernst Weil (1891-1965), antiquarian bookseller of Munich and London.
SCRIPT AND DECORATION:
It is notoriously difficult to attribute unsigned calligraphy to a particular writing-master, since the script usually aims to represent a formal ideal rather than to betray the quirks of an individual hand. It was suggested to the present owner by the late Berthold Wolpe, the author of an account of Beauchesne in A.S.Osley's Scribes and Sources 1980, that the calligrapher of this manuscript was John de Beauchesne of Paris, who in 1570 had given "the Elizabethans of England their first native printed writing-book." If the attribution is correct the manuscript must be localised to London (Beauchesne's first stay there was from 1565 to the late 1570s). Beauchesne was one of the greatest writing-masters in late 16th-century Europe (he died in 1620), and THE VERY HIGH QUALITY OF THIS CALLIGRAPHIC MANUSCRIPT could only increase his reputation. There is no direct evidence that this French translation of the short sayings of the Seven Wise Men of Greece was in England at an early date, but an attribution to one of the leading writing-masters in France would be even more difficult to make (the manuscript is too late for Jacques de La Rue or Pierre Hamon and too early for Jean de Beaugrand or Lucas Materot). IMPORTANT SIXTEENTH-CENTURY CALLIGRAPHY IS OF THE GREATEST RARITY AT AUCTION.