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Egerton MS 1894

Record Id:

032-001982808

Hierarchy Root Ancestor Record Id:

032-001982808

MDARK:

ark:/81055/vdc_100000000053.0x00010a

LARK:

ark:/81055/vdc_100174687919.0x000001

SLARK:

Format:

ISAD(G)

Reference (shelfmark):

Egerton MS 1894

Title:

Egerton Genesis Picture Book

Scope & Content:

Cycle of 149 illustrations of Genesis, from Creation to the latter part of the history of Joseph; full-page drawings arranged in one to four compartments on each page, executed in ink, and either with colour washes or unfinished, with (ff. 1r-9v) short captions in Ango-Norman French, based on Petrus Comestor, Historia Scholastica.

The subjects of the miniatures are:

ff. 1r-1v: The Days of Creation.

f. 2r: The descendants of Adam.

ff. 2v-4v: Scenes from the stories from Lamech to Noah.

ff. 4v-6r: The descendants of Noah-Ham and the story of Nimrod.

f. 6v: The descendants of Noah-Shem until the Calling of Abraham.

ff. 6v-11v: The story of Abraham and Sarah (the correct order: ff. 6v, 9v, 11r-11v, 10r-10v).

ff. 12r-13v: The story of Abraham, Isaac and Rebecca (the correct order: ff. 13r-13v. 12r).

ff. 12v; 14r-15r: The story of Isaac, Esau and Jacob (the correct order: ff. 12v, 14r-15r).

ff. 15v-18r: The story of Jacob and Rachel.

ff. 18r-18v: The story of Joseph.

Other English manuscripts related in style include: the Fitzwarin Psalter, Paris, Bibliothèque nationale de France, MS. lat. 765, the James Memorial Psalter, Add. MS 44949, and the Derby Psalter, Oxford, Bodleian Library MS Rawlinson G. 185. The artist responsible for the illuminations and drawings was named the Master of the Egerton Genesis after this manuscript. According to Joslin and Watson, The Egerton Genesis, 2001, he may be identified with Michiel van der Borch, a Flemish painter working in England, but this attribution has not been universaly accepted (see Sandler's review, 2003).

Collection Area:

Western Manuscripts

Project / Collection:

Egerton Manuscripts

Hierarchy Tree:

[{ "id" : "032-001982808", "parent" : "#", "text" : "Egerton MS 1894: Egerton Genesis Picture Book" , "li_attr" : {"class": "orderable"} }]

Hierarchy Record Ids:

032-001982808

Is part of:

not applicable

Hierarchy:

032-001982808

Container:

not applicable

Record Type (Level):

Fonds

Extent:

A parchment codex, 20 folios

Digitised Content:

https://iiif.bl.uk/uv/#?manifest=https://bl.digirati.io/iiif/ark:/81055/vdc_100174687919.0x000001

Thumbnail:

Languages:

Anglo-Norman
French

Scripts:

Latin

Start Date:

1350

End Date:

1374

Date Range:

3rd quarter of the 14th century

Era:

Access:

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User Conditions:

Letter of introduction required to view this manuscript.

Physical Characteristics:

Materials: Parchment.

Dimensions: 245 x 185 mm.

Foliation: ff. 20 (+ 15 unfoliated modern paper flyleaves: 8 at the beginning and 7 at the end); ff. 10-13 are out of order.

Collation; i^8-1 (ff. 1-7; 1 leaf excised after f. 1); ii⁸(ff. 8-15); iii² (ff. 16-17); iv³ (ff. 17-20; several leaves missing after f. 20).

Script: Gothic (ff. 1r-2r), Gothic cursive.

Binding: Post-1600. Red leather with gold tooling; marbled end-papers.

Custodial History:

Origin: England (Norfolk?).

Provenance:

The Schönfeld Technological Museum of Vienna: sold in 1860 by Lowenstein Brothers of Frankfurt-am-Main on behalf of the museum to Christie, Mason and Woods: printed 'v. Schönfeldsches Museum der Technologie zum Vortheil des Gewerbstandes errichtet im Jahre 1799 Französische Urschrift vom neunten oder eilften Jarhunderte' (f. [viii] recto).

Purchased from Christie, Mason and Woods, 23 March 1860 as 'Vienna Museum', lot 1286, by the British Museum, using the Farnborough Fund (£3,000 bequeathed in 1838 by Charles Long, Baron Farnborough (b. 1761, d. 1838), a cousin of Francis Henry Egerton, 8th Earl of Bridgewater (b. 1756, d. 1829), founder of the collection: inscribed by Sir Frederick Madden, 'Purchased at Christie's 23rd March 1860.'Vienna Museum', Lot 1286' (f. [iii] recto).

Information About Copies:

Full digital coverage available for this manuscript, see Digitised Manuscripts http://www.bl.uk/manuscripts/.

Select digital coverage available for this manuscript, see Catalogue of Illuminated Manuscripts http://www.bl.uk/catalogues/illuminatedmanuscripts/welcome.htm.

Publications:

Catalogue of Additions to the Manuscripts in the British Museum in the Years 1853-1875 (London: British Museum, 1877), no. Eg. 1894.

Walter de Gray Birch and Henry Jenner, Early Drawings and Illuminations: An Introduction to the Study of Illustrated Manuscripts (London: Bagster and Sons, 1879), p. 9.

Montague Rhodes James, Illustrations of the Book of Genesis, Being a Complete Reproduction in Facsimile of the Manuscript British Museum, Egerton 1894 (Oxford: Roxburghe Club, 1921).

[Eric G. Millar], British Museum Reproductions from Illuminated Manuscripts, Series 4 (London: British Museum, 1928), pl. 28.

A Guide to the Exhibition of Some Part of the Egerton Collection of Manuscripts in the British Museum (London, 1929), no. 17.

Eric G. Millar, 'The Egerton Genesis and the M.R. James Memorial Manuscript', Archaeologia, 87 (1938), 1-5, pl. 1.

Otto Pächt, 'A Giottesque Episode in English Illumination', Journal of the Warburg and Courtauld Institutes, 6 (1943), 51-70 (pp. 57-70, pls 16a, 17a, 18a, 19a, 20c).

Francis Wormald, 'The Fitzwarin Psalter and its Allies', Journal of the Warburg and Courtauld Institutes, 6 (1943), 71-77.

Joan Evans, English Art 1307-1461, Oxford History of English Art, 5 (Oxford: The Clarendon Press, 1949), pp. 16 n. 2, 95.

Eric G. Millar, 'Fresh Materials for the Study of English Illumination', in Studies in Art and Literature for Belle da Costa Greene, ed. by Dorothy Miner (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1954), pp. 286-94 (pp. 292-93, fig. 248).

George Henderson, 'Late Antique Influences in Some English Mediaeval Illustrations of Genesis', Journal of the Warburg and Courtauld Institutes, 25 (1962), 172-98.

Loren MacKinney, Medical Illustrations in Medieval Manuscripts, Wellcome Historical Medical Library, 5, 2 parts bound together (London: Wellcome Historical Medical Library, 1965), with Thomas Herndon, Part II, Medical Miniatures in Extant Manuscripts: A Checklist, no. 36, p. 136.

Margaret Rickert, Painting in Britain: The Middle Ages, 2nd edn (London: Penguin Books, 1965), p. 243 ns 8-9.

Illuminated Manuscripts Exhibited in the Grenville Library (London: British Museum, 1967), no. 26.

Francis Wormald, 'Bible Illustration in Medieval Manuscripts', in The Cambridge History of the Bible, 3 vols (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1963-1970), 2: The West from the Fathers to the Reformation, ed. by G. W. H. Lampe (1969), pp. 309-37 (pp. 319-20, 330).

M.W. Evans, Medieval Drawings (London: Hamlyn, 1969), no. 108.

Hugo Buchthal, Historia Troiana: Studies in the History of Mediaeval Secular Illustration, Studies of the Warburg Institute, 32 (London: Warburg Institute, 1971), p. 66.

E. M. Kelly, ''Ludus Coventriae' Play 4 and Egerton Genesis', Notes and Queries, 19 (1972), 443-44.

Elisabeth Klemm, Ein romanischer Miniaturenzyklus aus dem Maasgebiet, Wiener Kunstgeschichtliche Forschungen, 2 (Vienna: Adolf Holzhausens, 1973), pp. 27-28, 34 n. 64, 37 n. 71, 38 n. 72, 69 n. 160; pls 33, 40, 47, 48, 66.

C. M. Kauffmann, The Bible in British Art: 10th to 20th Centuries, Victoria & Albert Museum, Exhibition September 1977-January 1978 ([n.p.]: Cowell, 1978), no. 19.

Richard Marks and Nigel Morgan, The Golden Age of English Manuscript Painting 1200-1500 (London: Chatto & Windus, 1981), pp. 21-22.

Lynda Dennison, 'The Fitzwarin Psalter and its Allies': A Reappraisal', in England in the Fourteenth Century: Proceedings of the 1985 Harlaxton Symposium, ed. by W. M. Ormrod (Woodbridge: Boydell, 1986), pp. 42-66 (pp. 43-44, 47, 48).

Lucy Freeman Sandler, Gothic Manuscripts 1285-1385, 2 vols, A Survey of Manuscripts Illuminated in the British Isles, 5 (London: Harvey Miller, 1986), I, no. 129.

Kurt Weitzmann and Herbert L. Kessler, The Cotton Genesis: British Library Codex Cotton Otho B.VI (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1986), as 'EG').

The Age of Chivalry: Art in Plantagent England 1200-1400, ed. by Jonathan Alexander and Paul Binski (London: Royal Academy of Arts, 1987), pp. 218, 415, 501 [exhibition catalogue].

François Avril and Patricia Danz Stirnemann, Manuscrits enluminés d’origine insulaire VIIe-XXe siècle (Paris: Bibliothèque nationale, 1987), p.162.

Francis Wormald, Collected Writings, ed. by J. J. G. Alexander, T. J. Brown, and Joan Gibbs, 2 vols (London: Harvey Miller, 1984-1988), II: Studies in English and Continental Art of the Later Middle Ages, pp. 19, 88, 91-93, 101-102, pl. 91.

Patricia Basing, Trades and Crafts in Medieval Manuscripts (London: British Library, 1990), fig. 24.

John Lowden, 'Concerning the Cotton Genesis and Other Illustrated Manuscripts of Genesis', Gesta, 31 (1992), 40-53 (pp. 43-46, fig. 6).

James H. Morey, 'Peter Comestor, Biblical Paraphrase, and the Medieval Popular Bible', Speculum: A Journal of Medieval Studies, (1993), 6-43 (p. 9 n. 14).

Janet Backhouse, The Illuminated Page: Ten Centuries of Manuscript Painting in the British Library (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1997), no. 104.

Ruth Mellinhoff, 'Sarah and Hagar: Laughter and Tears', Illuminating the Book: Makers and Interpreters, ed. by Michelle P. Brown and Scot McKendrick (London: British Library, 1998), pp. 35-49 (42, figs 7,8).

Mary Coker Joslin and Carolyn Coker Joslin Watson, The Egerton Genesis (London: British Library, 2001) [with additional bibligraphy and complete set of reproductions].

Lucy Freeman Sandler, ‘The Egerton Genesis by Mary Coker Joslin; Carolyn Coker Joslin Watson’, Speculum, 78 (2003), 912-16. [review].

C. M. Kauffmann, Biblical Imagery in Medieval England 700-1500 (London: Harvey Miller, 2003), pp. 214, 220, 224-25, 227, 231, pls 168-170.

Kathryn A. Smith, Art, Identity and Devotion in Fourteenth-Century England: Three Women and their Books of Hours, (London: British Library, 2003), p. 149 n. 136.

Lois Bragg, Oedipus Borealis: The Aberrant Body in Old Icelandic Myth and Saga (New Jersey: Rosemont Press, 2004), pp. 120-22.

Lucy Freeman Sandler, The Lichtenthal Psalter and the Manuscript Patronage of the Bohun Family (London: Harvey Miller, 2004), p. 157 ns 60, 64.

Michelle Brown, The Holkham Bible: A Facsimile (London, British Library, 2007), pp. 9-10, 14, pl.4.

Scot McKendrick and Kathleen Doyle, Bible Manuscripts: 1400 Years of Scribes and Scripture (London: British Library, 2007), p. 137, fig. 124.

Sacred: Judaism, Christianity, and Islam and their Sacred Texts (London: British Library, 2007), p. 153 [exhibition catalogue].

Joe Flatman, Ships and Shipping in Medieval Manuscripts (London: British Library, 2009), pls 75, 76, 77.

Kathryn A. Smith, ‘Found in Translation: Images Visionary and Visceral in the Welles-Ros Bible’, Gesta 59: 2 (2020), 91-130 (p. 107 n. 76).

Exhibitions:

Snip it!, Jewish Museum, Berlin, 24 October 2014 - 1 March 2015

Material Type:

Archives and Manuscripts

Legal Status:

Not Public Record(s)

Notes:

Genesis, Abraham and the men of his family being circumcised. Exhibited: Snip it! Jewish Museum, Berlin, 24 October 2014 - 1 March 2015

Related Material:

Extract from the Catalogue of Additions (1877): 'PICTORIAL illustrations of the Book of Genesis, from the Creation to the latter part of the history of Joseph (ch. xliv.), contained in twenty leaves, each leaf having eight subjects. A leaf is wanting after f. 1. Short descriptions in French, taken from the "Historia Scholastica" of Petrus Comestor, accompany the drawings through the first part of the volume. The writing changes from a minute, and probably French, hand to one larger and evidently English. The drawings are executed in outline, and as far as f. 15 are generally tinted or coloured. They show unusual power of design and expression, with knowledge of the human figure, and skill in treating the draperies. The obvious intention of expressing an Oriental character in the features of the Hebrew :figures is; very remarkable and uncommon at the period. They may perhaps have been executed in the province of Gascony, at the beginning of the xivth century. Vellum. Small Quarto. From the Farnborough Fund.'