A pilgrim appealing to a bishop after returning home to find that his wife, believing him dead, has remarried, a miniature on a leaf from a Decretum Gratiani, in Latin [France (Toulouse), c.1320]

single leaf, c.435x290mm, vellum, with a large miniature and a large initial, extending into a partial border, 2 columns, 47 lines (c.245x80-20-80mm) with variable amounts of gloss on three sides, two marginal tears repaired with vellum, one marginal crease, slight water-staining and minor offsetting from a facing page

Provenance

(1) The parent volume was dismembered by 1818, perhaps in Paris: four miniatures and two marginal figures were published as the property of the architect Louis-François Petit-Radel (1739–1818), of Paris, and nine leaves with eight miniatures were sold from the ‘Collection de M. L[ucien] D[elamarre]’, by Belin, Paris, 8 May 1909, possibly to Martin Le Roy. (2) The present leaf was owned by ROBERT LEHMAN (1891–1969) of New York, art collector and co-founder of Lehman Brothers, his MS 37 (see also lots 1 and 13), which he obtained in 1924 from Kalebdjian, Paris (de Ricci, Census, II, 1937, p.1703); it was deaccessioned from the Lehman Collection in 2004, and appeared in J. Günther, Brochure no.9 (2006), no. 14 (col.ill.), from which it was acquired by the present owner.

Text and Illumination

In the Middle Ages the Decretum Gratiani was one of the fundamental works for the study of canon law; compiled in the 12th century, its author, Gratian, was probably a teacher at the newly founded university of Bologna. Its full title, the Concordia discordantium canonum, illustrates his aim to reconcile apparent inconsistencies and contradictions that existed between different traditions and authorities. It was divided into three main parts, of which the middle section is divided into 36 Causae, each of which describes and discusses a particular situation. The present leaf is the beginning of Causa XXXIV: in the miniature we see a seated bishop making his judgement; kneeling before him is the first husband, dressed in the typical garb of a pilgrim; beyond him are two lawyers; and behind them are the wife and her second husband, embracing.

Out of about 40 miniatures that would have been in the parent volume, about half are studied and reproduced in a series of articles by Alessandra Maria Bilotta, especially: ‘Le Décret de Gratien: un manuscrit de droit canonique toulousain reconstitué’, Art de l'enluminure, 24, 2008 (the present leaf reproduced on pp.6, 64–65); ‘Images dans les marges des manuscrits toulousains de la première moitié du XIVe siècle: Un monde imaginé entre invention et réalité’, Mélanges de l’Ecole française de Rome, 2009, pp.349–59; and ‘Nouvelles considérations sur un manuscrit toulousain du Décret de Gratien reconstitué’, in Le livre dans la région toulousaine et ailleurs au Moyen Âge, 2010, pp.73–83. More recently they have been discussed by A. Stones, Gothic Manuscripts 1260–1320, I, 2013, p.77, and II, 2015, pp.156–66, attributed to the ‘Gratian Fragments Master’.

Other leaves from the manuscript are now in the Fitzwilliam Museum, Cambridge; Gulbenkian Museum, Lisbon; Musée Marmottan, Paris; Museum of Art, Cleveland; Institute of Arts, Detroit; and Art Museum, Princeton. Two miniatures from the Petit-Radel collection, missing since the early 19th century, resurfaced this year and are offered in J. Günther, Brochure 17, no.27 (col.ills.).