The Ordination and Consecration of a Bishop, historiated initial on a leaf from the Colombina Pontifical, in Latin [France (Avignon), c.1320–25]

single leaf, c.297x203mm, vellum, with a four-line HISTORIATED INITIAL and foliate extension running more than the full height of the text, 22 lines, c.205x135mm, verso with original foliation ‘xxxviii’, the recto with two penwork initials and a minimal border, the decoration pristine, one tiny puncture and an insignificant scrape within the text area

 

(1) The parent manuscript is reliably localised to Avignon in the early 1320s. (2) It was probably owned by the scholar and bibliophile Fernando Colón (alias Ferdinand Columbus, son of the ‘discoverer’ of America, Christopher), whose library is preserved as the Biblioteca Colombina, Seville. (3) A large number of leaves from Colombina manuscripts were removed in or before 1884 and sold in Paris; about thirty leaves are currently known, more than half of which are today in the École des Beaux-Arts and the BnF, Paris; others are in the Free Library of Philadelphia and the Reading Public Museum, Pennsylvania; the Kupferstichkabinett, Berlin; and the Museum of European Art, Tokyo. (4) The present leaf was acquired by the present owner from Maggs Bros. in 2005.

This is a very fine leaf from a manuscript that is an important representative of the earliest phase of Avignon illumination during the period when seven successive popes, all French, resided in the city (1309–77). It is the subject of a recent detailed study: François Avril, ‘Quelques éléments nouveaux relatifs à la production avignonnaise du temps du pape Jean XXII: À propos d’un pontifical de Guillaume Durand dépecé’, Cahiers de Fanjeux, 51, 2016, pp.415–64 (see pp.427, 428 (col. fig.13), and 452 no.6).