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TEXT FROM JULY AND AUGUST.
(Italy [Ferrara]: 1441-48). 205 x 200 mm. (8 x 7 7/8"). 35 lines in a very fine rounded gothic hand.
Text in dark brown and red, capitals touched with yellow, two four-line "KL" initials in blue, pink, and green on burnished gold ground with leafy marginal extensions, the initials on the recto crowned with an exuberant spray of green, blue, and gold acanthus, hairline tendrils, pink flowers, and gilt bezants and leaves, the verso initials with a long bar border on outer margin painted pink on gilt ground, with pink, green, and blue motifs at middle and top, the border traced with black, the top of the border accompanied by a spray of hairline tendrils, colorful flowers, gold bezants, and leaves. ◆Lower margin of the verso trimmed away (with loss of the end of bar border, though not the text), some of the other margins trimmed close (crowding, but not affecting, the decoration), some fading to brown ink (less faded on recto, legible on both sides in any case), negligible dampstain in upper margin, short closed tear just entering gold bar at top left of verso; not without imperfections, but still an exquisite and very desirable leaf with richly colored and gilt embellishment.
This item presents a very special, perhaps singular, opportunity to own the only known calendar leaf from the renowned Llangattock Breviary to emerge since the manuscript was taken apart in the 20th century. Executed with great skill and delicacy in sensitive Italianate colors highlighted by spring green and pink, our leaf is unsurprisingly from a manuscript intended for a powerful aristocrat. It comes from the celebrated Breviary illuminated for the chapel of the Marquises of Este, rulers of Ferrara and Mantua, a manuscript commissioned by Leonello d'Este (duke of Ferrara from 1441-50). According to the d'Este family records, this manuscript seems to be the Breviary done for Leonello by Giorgio d'Alemagna, Bartolomeo de Beninc , Guglielmo Giraldi, and Matteo de' Pasti (see Toniolo, "La Miniatura a Ferrara dal Tempo di Cosm Tura all'eredit di Ercole de' Roberti" [1998], pp. 19-20 and 76-77). Leaves from this manuscript show subtle variations in the style of the illuminations, a result of work performed individually by a team of artists doing variations on a theme. At one time in a Spanish library, the manuscript was brought to Britain during the Peninsular War and came to be owned by the Rolls family, later Lords Llangattock, of Monmouth in Wales, from whom it takes its name. By the time the work reached Britain, most of the miniatures had already been cut out. The Breviary sold at Christie's on 8 December 1958 (lot #190), after which it was acquired and subsequently dismembered by Goodspeed's of Boston. The attribution of this leaf to the Llangattock Breviary is based its script, ruling, and style of decoration, as well as physical attributes such as width of the leaf and the appearance of the vellum, which all correlate to other known leaves from this manuscript. Furthermore, according to the 1958 auction description of the complete manuscript, the entire calendar section had its lower margins trimmed away, as here. The present leaf appeared in a 1979 catalogue of bookseller Kenneth Rendell, and it remains the only known calendar leaf from this manuscript that has ever been advertised. (ST19882)
Price: $5,000.00