A Fragment from the Várad (Zalka) antiphonal, and another leaf from a Breviary, from illuminated manuscripts on vellum [Bohemia, second half of the fifteenth century]

cutting and a leaf: (a) cutting from the Várad (Zalka) antiphonal, with part of the office for the Mass for a lesser confessor (“De confessoribus non celebribus”), 385mm. by 264mm., with two large angular initials decorated with fine and skilled portraits of human figures (two women apparently in Praemonstratensian robes, one bearded man with a large nose, remains of another man’s face at upper edge, owls and birds), remains of 3 lines of text in alternate red, blue and black, with music in red and black on a 4-line stave, same on verso with a large initial ‘K’ in pink on pale green grounds with gold penwork, and delicate scrolling pink and green foliage terminating in flowerbuds and gold fruit, recovered from a binding of a seventeenth-century book (title: “Decebale” on verso) and with stains, scuffs and folds, Bohemia (perhaps Prague), 1477-90; (b) leaf from an illuminated Breviary, 320mm. by 312mm., with a large initial ‘O’ in green acanthus leaves with blue infill heightened with fern-like foliate sprays in yellow, set on a brightly burnished gold ground within a red frame shaded realistically in trompe l’oeil style, woody scrolling extensions into border ending with green multi-lobed leaves, 5 simple initials in red or blue on verso, double column, 30 lines in a fine angular bookhand, one fold across middle from reuse around a booklet, else excellent condition, probably Bohemia, second half of the fifteenth century

Item (a) is a hitherto unrecorded fragment of the Várad (Zalka) antiphonal. The original codex was produced for János Filipecz (1476-90), the bishop of Várad (now Oradea, Romania) and a key adviser to Hungary’s Renaissance prince Matthias Corvinus, and once contained the entire rite of Várad Cathedral. The broken, angular initials here are notably close to that of the Mlada Boleslav Hymnal (Czech Republic, Okresní museum, MS. II A 1: Drobna, Gothic Drawing, 1963, pls.180-1) produced by the Prague workshop of Janicek Zmilely of Pisek in the late fifteenth and early sixteenth century. In the seventeenth century the entire Várad (Zalka) choirbook series was in Győr (German: Raab), but was then used by a workshop there for binding books and accounts. In 1872 János Zalka, bishop of Győr, had the surviving leaves of the antiphonal rebound. Fragments have emerged in libraries in Hungary (Egházmegyei Könyvtár, Fr.65/5,6 and Országos Széchényi Könyvtár, Fr. A 58: reproduced in A Star in the Raven’s Shadow, 2008, no.10, pls.33-34, other leaves catalogued in Mittelalterliche Lateinische Handschriften-Fragmente in Győr, 1998, nos.64-8) and Slovakia. The present leaf was acquired at auction in Germany. Item (b) is a fine example of Bohemian illumination, with parallels for the scrolling infill of its initial and in its woody tendrils terminating in green leaves in two fifteenth-century Prague Bibles (NK, IV.G.14: Stejskal and Voit, Iluminované rukopisy doby husitské, 1990, no.26, pl.42; and Leitmeritz Staatsarchiv, Inv. Nr.BIF 3/1: Kunst der Gotik aus Böhmen, 1985, no.24).