Egerton MS 3127

Other leaves and cuttings of this volume are Additional MS 27695, Additional MS 28841 and Egerton MS 3781; Cleveland, Museum of Art, J.H. Wade Fund n. 1953.152; and Florence, Museo del Bargello, inv. 2065. Another section was sold as part of 'Eine Wiener Sammlung', Berlin, 12 May 1930, lot 3, with plate.

From the British Museum Catalogue of Additions to the Manuscripts 1931-1935 (1967):

'Two ILLUMINATED LEAVES from a manuscript of which other leaves are contained in Add. MSS. 27695 and 28841. North Italian. See also Brit. Mus. Quart., viii, 1933-1934, pp. 128-130. The manuscript originally contained at least two items, viz.:-(a) a Latin prose treatise on the vices by a member of the Cocharelli family of Genoa, composed for the instruction of his children and particularly his son John, the theme being illustrated by anecdotes derived from his grandfather, Pelegrino Cocharelli;-(b) a verse treatise by the same author, in Latin, recording incidents from the history of Sicily, apparently in the reign of Frederick II (1298-1337), possibly intended as supplementary illustration to the prose work.

The present leaves belong to the prose treatise; f. 1 is concerned with usury, f. 2 with treachery. Examples of treachery are taken from events in Cyprus 'tempore avi nostri', the author giving a garbled account of Cypriot history with general accusations of murder by poisoning. He tells of the death of a certain King Henry [? I, 1218-1243], said to have been poisoned by a nephew, Hugh [presumably Hugh III, 1267-12841, who was in turn poisoned by the Master of the Templars, leaving a son John [I, died 1285], 'qui mortuus fuit mala morte', and another called Henry [II, 1285-1324], 'qui nunc dominatur regnum predictum, cui multa et diversa scandala evenerunt'. This seems to indicate that the treatise was composed before 1324: while a reference occurs in Add. MS. 27695, f. 6, to the death of Philip the Fair in 1314; from this evidence it is clear that the treatise must have been composed at some time between 1314 and 1324. It is not possible to arrive at a similarly definite date of composition for the verse treatise which seems, however, to be more or less contemporary with that in prose.

Vellum; ff. 2. 173 mm. x 114 mm. Late XIV cent. Written and illuminated in North Italy by an unknown artist. The illuminations have been ascribed to Cybo, the so-called Monk of Hyères, otherwise known as 'Le moine des Isles d'Or', because of apparent resemblances to the style said to be his, but, in fact, this personage is a fiction invented by the Provencal writer Jean de Nostradame (see G. Tiraboschi, Storia della letteratura italiana, v, Modena, 1789, pp. 981-984) and called after the name and the anagram of the name of two of Nostradame's friends: Scipion Cibo and Raymond de Souliers (see Jean de Nostradame, Les vies des plus célèbres et anciens poètes provencaux, ed. C. Chabaneau and J. Anglade, Paris, 1913, pp. (98)-(113)). p. Toesca, La pittura e la miniatura nella Lombardia, Milan, 1912, p. 411, n. 4, asserted that more than one artist worked on the MS.; on the other hand, Otto Pacht, 'Early Italian Nature Studies', Journal of the Warburg and Courtauld Institutes, xiii, 1950, p. 21, speaks of only one illuminator, and there is no decisive reason for postulating several artists.

The subjects of the illuminations are as follows:-(i) Margins of a leaf pattern executed in gold on a tracery of red and blue, with occasional drawings of insects and, below, four roundels with moths and a queen ant. f. 1;-(2) A hawking scene. This folio is reproduced as pl. XLII in Brit. Mus. Quart., viii, where it is observed (p. 129) that the whole scene shows marked oriental influences; a fact which is emphasised by the representation of Gluttony as an oriental potentate in Add. MS. 27695, f. 13. There is, however, no evidence of direct copying from an oriental model, and any influence is probably at second-hand (see the comments of Pächt, op. cit., p. 21 and n. 5 and cf. Troyes MS. 400, f. 67 b, reproduced in L. Morel-Payen, Les plus beaux monuments de la bibliothèque de Troyes, Troyes, 1935, pl. XXVII, fig. 91 (not go as printed on the plate), and p. 138, where it is suggested that the style recalls a Persian miniature). f. 1b;-(3) A narrow l.h. border of green trees on a blue ground; the other borders depict crimes of robbery and murder. The text itself is embellished with drawings of a beetle, a centipede, and caterpillars. f. 2;- (4) A margin similar to f. i of leaf pattern of gold on a tracery of red and blue, with a tiny drawing of a green, winged fly (perhaps a lace-wing) at the top. Below, four roundels containing a grasshopper, a moth, a cranefly and another grasshopper. f. 2b.'