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Updated 4-10-08
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15th-Century North Italian Illuminated Manuscript

North Italian Illuminated Manuscript / Italian School, 16th and early 17th-Century Drawings
Cherubino Alberti / Michelangelo Buonarotti (After) / Annibale Carracci / Parmigianino / Marcantonio Raimondi
Giulio Romano / Jacopo Palma il Giovane / Andrea Schiavone / Tintoretto / Titian (after) / Veronese / Federico Zuccaro

Italian School, 17th-Century Drawings / Simone Cantarini / Domenichino / Guercino / Pier Francesco Mola

Italian School Printmakers, 15th-17th Centuries: Venetian School, c. 1500 / Raphael School / Giovanni Jacopo Caraglio
Marcantonio Raimondi / The Master of the Die / Anea Vico / Agostino Veneziano / Nicholas Beatrizet
Michelangelo Buonarotti (After) / Girolamo Fagiuoli / Cherubino Alberti / Titian (after) / Tintoretto (after)
Parmigianino / Giorgio Ghisi / Diana Scultori / Annibale Carracci / Ludovico Carracci / Simone Cantarini / Elisabetta Sirani
Gerolamo Scarsello

Netherlandish School 15th-17th-Century Drawings / Flemish School, 17th-Century
Bernaert van Orley / Lucas van Leyden / Jan Baptiste de Wael / Peter Paul Rubens
Philipp Sadeler / Rembrandt School

Hans Sebald Beham

18th-Century Drawings / 19th-Century Drawings / 20th-Century Drawings
During the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries, the nobility and the merchant class in Italy could afford the services of artists to make them illuminated prayer books to take with them to church for services. Our example contains thirteen leaves hand lettered on both sides, giving a total of twenty-six pages. The manuscript is on vellum. The first page contains two miniatures, the Virgin and St. Peter. It also contains a coat of arms, which we have not yet identified. There are three other miniatures: The Virgin, St. James the Pilgrim, and St. Paul. All pages contain either text, music, or a mixture of both. We have illustrated a number of these below. The illuminations are fresh, but the pages are worn, sometimes with soiling from many years of use, sometimes corners have been lost and new corners made to keep the damage from becoming worse. At sometime in the 18th century, the manuscrpt was bound in a Florentine cover. The cover measures 195x146mm (c. 7-5/8 x 5-5/8 inches). The pages themselves measure approximately 186x136mm (7-5/6x5-3/8 inches). All pages are the same background color; page 24 below comes closest to showing it. We are asking $20,000 for the manuscript.
Page 1: The Virgin Mary and St. Peter are given pride of place on the opening page; bottom center is the coat of arms of the owner. The style seems to be North Italian and the date mid to late 15th century. The illuminations, marginalia, and red letters are in very good condition and seem hardly to have aged; the black ink, however, has faded (though not so much as the photograph suggests).
Page 4: The Virgin Mary. The style seems to be North Italian and the date mid to late 15th century. The illuminations, marginalia, and red letters are in very good condition and seem hardly to have aged; the black ink, however, has faded (though not so much as the photograph suggests).
Page 6: St. James, who was the Apostle to Spain, shown with his pilgrim's hat. The style seems to be North Italian and the date mid to late 15th century. The illuminations, marginalia, and red letters are in very good condition and seem hardly to have aged; the black ink, however, has faded (though not so much as the photograph suggests).
Page 24: St. Paul. The style seems to be North Italian and the date mid to late 15th century. The illuminations, marginalia, and red letters are in very good condition and seem hardly to have aged; the black ink, however, has faded (though not so much as the photograph suggests). This leaf (and only this leaf) is detached from the binding.
Page 17: mixed text and music. The style seems to be North Italian and the date mid to late 15th century. The illuminations, marginalia, and red letters are in very good condition and seem hardly to have aged; the black ink, however, has faded (though not so much as the photograph suggests).
Page 22: musical setting for the De Profundis (Psalm 130). The style seems to be North Italian and the date mid to late 15th century. The illuminations, marginalia, and red letters are in very good condition and seem hardly to have aged; the black ink, however, has faded (though not so much as the photograph suggests); the blue is richer than the photograph.
Front cover. The style seems to be Florentine and the date 18th century. There is a one inch tear at the bottom of the spine (visible at left). The front tie visible at the right margins has broken off; the rear tie is fine (about 7-1/4 inches remains).

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