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Lot 301
GEORGE WEISSBORT (1928-2013) Still life - a glass jar, cauliflower, onions and draped table covering upon a surface, signed and dated '65, oil on paper laid onto board, 35 x 42cm; and one further still life by the same hand, signed and dated '76, oil on board, 33 x 41cm, both unframed (2) Prov: From the artist's estate
Lot 80
ƟPresbyter Leo of Naples, Historia Alexandri Magni (Historia de preliis), in Latin, manuscript on paper [Italy (perhaps northern border with Switzerland), second half of fourteenth century]52 leaves (plus an original endleaf at front and back), complete, collation i-ii16, iii19 (last probably a singleton), catchwords within penwork designs (two-headed monsters, and elaborate cabouchon with crosses picked out within its body), single column with 28 lines in a fine and precise late gothic hand showing influence of Italian university script, initials in similar pen with ornamental strokes, the frontispiece opening with a large initial ‘S’ infilled with hatching and crosses and with simple line-drawn acanthus leaves filling margins on two sides, watermarks not very distinct but certainly a simple crossbow (arbelete) of the form in Briquet 701-09 (mostly Italy, including Pisa, Bologna, Siena, from 1320-1397) and perhaps also 710 (Paris, 1407-11), of these closest to 705 (Geneva, 1345-97) , later title “Vita Alexandri Magnis” at head of frontispiece (probably added in sixteenth century), gatherings strengthened at stitch-points and ends with small cuttings from a fourteenth-century Italian manuscript, small stains, else in outstandingly fresh condition, 192 by 135mm.; late medieval limp parchment binding stitched at head and foot of spine through parchment cuttings recovered from a medieval manuscript (probably thirteenth century), these placed flat against outside of spine, remains of two ties on vertical board, small stains and scuffs, else good and solid condition An excellent copy of the fantastic and enthralling life of Alexander the Great in the form known to most of the readers of the Middle Ages and later; still in its original binding, and a century older than the only other recorded copy to appear on the open marketProvenance:1. Written in the second half of the fourteenth century, probably by a northern Italian scribe, perhaps on or just over the Swiss border towards Geneva.2. In ethnically Italian ownership for the first century or so of its life, most probably in an ecclesiastical centre: endleaves used for scribal practise by a number of scrawling Italian hands (alphabets and common Classical quotations, and a riddle in Latin attributed to Albertus Magnus), in one case adding the date “Die 18 Junij 1527”.3. Rediscovered in a Swiss aristocratic family library.Text:Accounts of the life and deeds of Alexander the Great (356-323 BC.) attracted fabulous stories even in the Ancient World, and by the Middle Ages such accounts had become a blend of history and wild myth, offering their readers both instruction and entertainment in equal measure. Here the imagination of the European medieval reader could run riot, creating a fantastic world of staggering opulence and strange cultures and creatures, which were both startlingly alien and fascinating at the same time.The story here opens with the Egyptian sorcerer Nectnaebo’s seduction of Olympias, the wife of King Philip of Macedonia, while disguised as the god Amon, thus fathering Alexander. This is followed by Alexander’s youth in Macedonia and accidental murder of Nectnaebo, before his taming of the horse Bucephalus, tutoring under Aristotle and Callisthenes and ascension to the throne. The next section opens with his meetings with Apollo and Hercules and his military campaigns in Italy, Africa and the destruction of the city of Tyre. The author then includes Alexander’s supposed correspondence with Darius, king of Medea, followed by accounts of their battles in Persia, Alexander’s conquest of Asia Minor, and travels to Cilicia, Byzantium and Mesopotamia. Darius is then murdered by his own generals, and Alexander finds him on his deathbed and agrees to marry his daughter, Roxana. The invasion of India follows, with descriptions of its fantastical vast interior, including King Porus’ elephant army, breathtakingly opulent palace and love of music. The next section opens with a letter from Alexander to Calistradis, queen of the Amazons, and then describes Alexander’s encounter with dangerous river-monsters called “ypocami” (hippopotamuses), before fighting lions, bears, tigers and leopards, and observing crocodiles, scorpions and dragons of all colours and sizes, as well as a beast with three horns that was as strong as an elephant. A description of the phoenix follows, then Alexander’s correspondence with Dindymus, king of the Indian Brahmins, his travels in Nubia and meeting with twenty-two kings of Tartary, visit to the ocean at the end of the world, flights through the air on a griffon-drawn carriage and descent to bottom of sea in a primitive diving bell. This is followed by the death of the horse Bucephalus and a description of his tomb, before Alexander’s own poisoning with wine and a feather, and his dying farewell to a pregnant Roxana before dividing his empire among his generals. The text ends with Alexander’s death and burial in Alexandria with Ptolomy’s public mourning, before a description of his golden tomb, appearance and the twelve cities founded by him.This is the version through which the majority of medieval readers knew of Alexander’s life, and from which almost all early printed copies come. However, its textual descent is far from simple, and at many times has hung by the slimmest of textual threads. Its fundamental base is a compilation of Alexandrian material of probably the third century AD., once attributed falsely to the historian Callisthenes. Five or six redactions exist of it in Greek, as well as the so-called δ* line of descent, which does not survive in Greek, but is known only from the Latin translation made by Leo, a presbyter of Naples. He was sent in the mid-tenth century by Dukes John III and Marinus II of Campania to the Byzantine court in Constantinople on a diplomatic mission, and while there sourced a Greek exemplar of the text which he determined to translate for the readers of Western Europe. That translation, however, does not survive in its original form, but exists in three close but separate versions, each of which has its own lines of descent producing a wealth of varying witnesses, which spread widely and quickly throughout Europe. The version here shows some common features with a manuscript dated 1433 now at Harvard (Houghton Library, MS. 121).From the Middle Ages to the last century the text has remained stalwartly popular, and many manuscripts survive, with a handful in the grand private collections of the last century (including Martin Bodmer and Philip Hofer). However, these were acquired privately, and we can find only one other to ever come to the open market: a fifteenth-century copy sold in Sotheby’s, 12 May 1914, lot 27, from the collection of J.E.H. Morton (once Guglielmo Libri, acquired by Morton at his sale, London, Sotheby’s, 28 Mar. 1859, lot 35; and purchased in 1914 by the Houghton Library). We might also add the late fifteenth-century Flemish copy of the abridged text that appeared in Sotheby’s, 11 December 1972, lot 41, and note that only a tiny handful of the other available accounts of this ruler, all to some degree spin-offs of the present text, have ever appeared on the open market, and the last in Sotheby’s, 5 December 1989, lot 96. Ɵ Indicates that the lot is subject to buyer’s premium of 24% exclusive of VAT (0% VAT).
Lot 81
ƟThe Canterbury ‘Trussel’ Bible, with prologues of Jerome and Interpretation of Hebrew Names, in Latin, illuminated manuscript on fine parchment [southern England, or perhaps northern France, third quarter of the thirteenth century] 690 leaves (plus two original endleaves at front, and two at back), foliated in modern hand to include endleaves and followed here, uncollatable in usual fashion, but entire text checked and only one leaf missing (that with 3 Kings, end of 22-opening 23), else complete, double column of 44 lines of a legible and professional university hand in dark black ink, capitals touched in brick-red, occasional marginalia set within coloured penwork boxes, versal initials in alternate red or blue set both in edge of column and in adjacent margin, running titles in alternate red or blue capitals at head of page with penwork extensions, 2-line initials in red or blue with elaborate contrasting penwork encasing them and filling margins with vine-like foliage curls and jagged edged lines along the innermost edges of their descenders, sixty-six decorated initials in blue or soft pink, heightened with white penwork, often enclosing lacertine dragon-headed drollery creatures, with foliate shoots and gold bezants at corners pushing into margins, all on contrasting coloured grounds with tiny white penwork, seventy-two historiated initials in blue or soft pink enclosing Bible scenes and figures, with thin gold bars used as frame to their grounds, these often with thick bodied foliate extensions terminating in tiny leaves and gold bezants in borders (that opening prologue to Genesis with decorated bar borders in same on three sides of text), ten very large historiated initials containing figures with castle turrents, curled animals and other devices, with space filled within the bodies of the initial with lacertine winged dragons curling around to bite their own bodies and sprouting foliage from their tails, one full-page Genesis initial with seven scenes of the life of Christ set within quadrilobed gold frames with sharp points at the intersections of their lobes, all set on a single blue and pink decorated band and with elaborate head and foot pieces in margin or swirling and interlocking foliage terminating in small leaves and gold bezants, many leaves with original alphabetical quire and leaf signatures, smudging to details of two initials, white paint of faces partly oxidised to grey in places, natural flaw to parchment on fol. 263, small number of mistakes by the painter of the versal initials (in form: missing numeral on fol. 184v, subsequently corrected by dropping ‘xvii’ later in text; and ‘xxxii’ on fol. 344v where he should have written “xxxiv’, thus ‘xlii’ repeated twice on fols. 347v-48r), small dark spotting in inner gutter on fols. 325v-326r, small losses to top of leaf in opening text of John (affecting only a few characters in uppermost 8 lines), two or three wormholes in first leaf, trimmed at edges with losses to running titles, else in very good condition, 174 by 115mm.; early nineteenth-century blue morocco, tooled with frames of rollstamps around a central rectangle of angular floral bosses, the outermost frame profusely gilt with floral designs, spine gilt tooled in compartments with “BIBLIA LATINA / MS / CIRC. 1353” (see below), outermost edges of inside of boards also profusely gilt, pale blue watered silk pastedowns and doublures (so close to the binding of another Bible ex Yates Thompson collection, and sold last in our rooms, 9 December 2015, lot 111, to suggest the same binder), the width and weight of the volume causing the binding to separate from the book block at front and back, now nearly loose in binding and held in place only by silk doublures (these with tears where binding attaches to volume), two thongs snapped in Pauline Epistles, but overall in solid and presentable state, gilt edgesThis is a fine thirteenth-century Bible, produced in a de luxe format with nearly one hundred and fifty decorated initials, probably in England. Only the tiniest handful of such Bibles surviving today have any secure medieval provenance, but this was demonstrably in the library of Canterbury Cathedral, the absolute epicentre of Christian worship in the British Isles, throughout the Middle Ages; and bears on its endleaf the signature of one of the last members of the community before the Reformation, who presumably took it with him. From there it passed through the hands of Thomas Rawlinson, “the Leviathan of book collectors”, and thereafter to the libraries of an important British theologian, a Liberal politician and a Mayfair aristocrat. It has not appeared on the open market in nearly forty years and is now the very last recorded manuscript codex in private hands from this most important of English monastic libraries Provenance:1. The Cathedral Priory of the Holy Trinity or Christ Church, Canterbury, the mother church of the English people and the central site of English Christian life: with an erased inscription on front original endleaf, but read with ultra-violet light: “Eccl[es]ie chr[isti] cantuarie” (most probably very late thirteenth or fourteenth century). The cathedral was founded by St. Augustine in 598 as his own seat and that of his successors, within the structure of the royal palace of King Æthelberht of Kent, itself reportedly of Roman origin. As a church rather than a monastery, Christ Church’s community consisted of secular canons up to the Norman Conquest, with monks introduced after the Norman Conquest by Archbishop Lanfranc. Since then, it has been the mother church of Christianity in the British Isles, perhaps the most important pilgrimage site in England, the site of the martyrdom of St. Thomas Becket, as well as the burial place of the archbishops of Canterbury and Edward Plantagenet the Black Prince, and Henry IV. As the absolute focus for English devotions, it has loomed large in the English-speaking imagination, with William of Malmesbury in his Gesta Pontificum claiming of it that, “Nothing like it could be seen in England either for the light of its glass windows, the gleaming of its marble pavements, or the many-coloured paintings which led the eyes to the panelled ceiling above”, and Chaucer using it as the ultimate destination of his fictitious pilgrims in his Canterbury Tales. The present manuscript is probably English in origin (see below), and was published as such by Sotheby’s in 1967 and the late Jeremy Griffiths in 1995. If this is correct, then it must come from a large scribal and intellectual centre, such as Oxford or Canterbury. It may be identifiable as one of a small number of complete bibles in the early fourteenth-century booklist of the community (edited by M.R. James, The Ancient Libraries of Canterbury and Dover, 1903, no. II) as item 600 (“Biblia”), or among the additional material at the end of that list, recording books of former members bequeathed to the community. Of these, only six Bibles were given by men who lived after the present manuscript was copied: (i & ii) items 1639-40, two bibles from the collection of Archbishop Robert Winchelsey (reigned 1245-1313); (iii) item 1722, from ‘John of Thanet’ (presumably the early fourteenth-century monk of the same name from whose cope a panel still survives, embroidered with his name and profession, now Victoria & Albert Museum T.337-1921); (iv) item 1731, from ‘Robert Poucin’; (v) item 1773, from ‘William of Ledbury’; and (vi) III:1, that from the collection of Prior William of Eastry (held office 1285-1331). Ɵ Indicates that the lot is subject to buyer’s premium of 24% exclusive of VAT (0% VAT).
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77168 item(s)/page