AN ILLUMINATED VELLUM MANUSCRIPT LEAF WITH CHARMING GROTESQUES FROM A FINE MONUMENTAL LECTERN BIBLE IN LATIN.

TEXT FROM JEREMIAH.

(14th century). 406 x 270 mm (16 x 10 5/8"). Double column, 50 lines of text in an excellent, large gothic book hand.

Attractively matted. Headlines and chapter numerals in red and blue, THREE FINE THREE-LINE INITIALS in blue, orange, or pink with white tracery, the interiors of the letters with scrolls of foliage in orange, blue, and white against a burnished gold ground, ONE OF THE INITIALS WITH THE FACE OF A YOUNG MAN who looks warily at a winged dragon peering at him from the margin, all of the capitals with marginal extensions in colors and gold, and THREE VERY LONG SEPARATE BAR BORDERS in pink, blue, white, and burnished gold, EACH TERMINATING IN A DELIGHTFUL DRAGON. Small, insignificant holes or thinning in bottom margin as a natural result of stretching and scraping the vellum during manufacture, faint and tiny dampstains right at top edge, but IN VERY FINE CONDITION, the vellum, paint, and gold all bright and fresh.

This striking leaf with its whimsical decoration comes from what was obviously a grand Bible. The original manuscript is known to have been bequeathed to an unidentified Dominican convent in 1450 by the lawyer and judge Mirmellus Arnandi. In our own time, it was sold as lot 326 at Parke-Bernet on 29 November 1948 to the foliophile Otto Ege (1888-1951), who began to dismember it. Of the approximately 380 leaves in the original codex, 210 now reside in the Schøyen paleography collection. When Ege put together his celebrated leaf book of 50 Medieval illuminated manuscript leaves, this Bible was represented by a leaf appearing as item #14 in each of the 40 sets he assembled. His commentary accompanying the leaf says, in part, that the Bible in question was made during the "golden age" of illumination, when Paris "became the center in which the finest manuscripts were written and sold. In the quarter century from 1275 to 1300, marked advances were effected in the art. The bar borders came to be executed in rich opaque gouache pigments, with ultramarine made of powdered lapis lazuli predominating. The foliage scroll work inside the initial frame created a style that persisted with little or no change for nearly two hundred years. The script was well executed and was without rigidity or tension. All these elements, together with the sparkle which was created by the casual distribution of the burnished gold accents, give to this leaf a striking atmosphere of joyous freedom." (ST11383c)