A Romanesque white-vine initial with a biting bird, on a fragment of Bede’s Homiliae in Evangelium, in Latin [Italy, Tuscany, c.1150]

cutting, c.200x150mm, vellum, with a zoomorphic initial 'Q', blind-ruled, 22 lines occupy c.185x108mm, stained, the lower part of the page with a cutting from the same leaf, covering an area of dirt and damage, in a modern cloth binding with a black leather title piece lettered in gilt

 

Reported to be from the collection of Jonathan J.G. Alexander, Professor at New York University and a specialist in early medieval, Romanesque, and Italian illuminated manuscripts. Bought in 1994 in New York by Ernst Boehlen (his MS 1120 ES), and sold in our rooms, 6 July 2006, lot 9, to the present owner.

The recto, bound as the verso, contains part of Peter Damian’s Sermon 72, on the Dedication of a church; this concludes above the decorated initial, which introduces the beginning of Bede’s Homiliae in evangelium, II.25, for the same occasion (cf. Corpus Christianorum, Series Latina, CXXII, pp.368–69).

The fine style of the initial with the delicate bird is close to that of the MASTER OF THE MORGAN SACRAMENTARY (see K. Berg, Studies in Tuscan Twelfth-Century Illumination, 1968, pp. 136-42, figs.208, 214-26).