Fragment of a Missal, in Latin, illuminated manuscript on vellum [central Spain (perhaps Guadalupe), early sixteenth century]

a quire of 6 leaves (3 bifolia), 373mm. by 260mm., single column, 21 lines, written in a monumental rounded gothic hand, capitals touched in yellow, rubrics in red, 2-line initials in red, blue or gold on coloured grounds decorated with pairs of coloured flowers, one 4-line initial formed of a blue fish on a gold ground decorated with red flowers, all pages with full-borders of coloured acanthus, flowers and strawberries on vellum or coloured grounds framed in burnished gold, mixing antique motifs of the Italian Renaissance with the naturalistic flora and fauna depicted by the Ghent-Bruges school, including birds, snails, butterflies, angels, monsters, a hissing dragon and a roaring lion, a hunting putto with a dead bird, fighting knights on horseback, monograms of the Virgin (MARIA) and Christ (IHS) and two angels holding heraldic arms (d'azur a la tour d'argent; smudged but perhaps those of the Pedrosa of Castile or the Torre of Léon), slightly rubbed in places, otherwise in excellent and fresh condition, cutting of a Swedish sale catalogue (no.1598) pasted inside upper cover, twentieth-century marbled paper over pasteboard with vellum spine, by G. Hedberg, Stockholm

From the collection of Per Hierta (1864-1924), Swedish bibliophile who donated over 300 incunables to the Royal Library, Stockholm, and a number of bindings which are now in the Röhsska Museum of Arts and Crafts in Gothenburg.

The decoration of the initials and borders are closely related to manuscripts made for the monastery of Guadalupe in c.1506, which sold its old service books around the turn of the sixteenth century and commissioned replacements, “profusely illustrated, rich in colour and possessing an extraordinary variety of ornamental motifs, amongst which the wealth of interlacing ornament makes evident the Mudéjar influence” (J.D. Bordona, Spanish Illumination, II, 1930, pp.60-1; C.G. Villacampa, Grandezas de Guadalupe, 1924). A Gospel Lectionary from this set was sold in our rooms, 7 July 2009, lot 43, and is the companion volume to an Epistle Lectionary in Harvard (Houghton Library, MS. Typ 199H; see R.S. Wieck, Late Medieval and Renaissance Illuminated Manuscripts, 1983, pp.102-3) which is dated 6 October 1506.