Leaf from a Gospel Lectionary, decorated manuscript on vellum [Italy, 12th century]

Property from the Albright-Knox Art Gallery

Leaf from a Gospel Lectionary

Decorated manuscript in Latin on vellum. [Italy (possibly Piacenza?), 12th century (2nd quarter or middle?)]

Single leaf, c.330×235mm; blind-ruled and written in a very fine regular Romanesque bookhand with with 22 lines per page (c. 225×120mm); the text comprises parts of readings from Thursday in the 3rd week to the 4th Sunday after Epiphany; decorated with a very tall initial ‘I’ in blue and red on the verso, and two smaller initials on the recto, foliated ‘3’

LITERATURE:

Scott Gwara, Otto Ege’s Manuscripts (Cayce, SC, 2013), Handlist no. 3 and fig. 74; citing leaves in seven American institutions, and Ege’s portfolio of ‘Fifty Original Leaves’, in which leaves from this manuscript were no. 3.

PROVENANCE:

(1) Probably made for use in northern Italian Benedictine monastery, possibly at Piacenza: von Scherling reports that the saints in the Sanctorale included Sabinus, bishop of Piacenza (17 January), two feasts of Benedict (21 March, 11 July), Antoninus (of Piacenza?), Archelaus (of Cremona?, just 30km from Piacenza), and Zeno (of Verona?).

(2) Erik von Scherling, manuscript dealer of Leiden, Rotulus catalogue, IV (Winter, 1937), no. 1849.

(3) Otto Ege: owned by March 1938, when reproduced in his article “I Am a Biblioclast”, Avocations, 1, pp. 516–20 at p. 516.

(4) Albright-Knox Art Gallery, Buffalo, NY; Gallery Purchase, 1940 (1940:355.13)