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Add MS 28841
- Record Id:
- 032-002020265
- Hierarchy Root Ancestor Record Id:
- 032-002020265
- MDARK:
- ark:/81055/vdc_100000000034.0x00004b
- LARK:
- ark:/81055/vdc_100165148000.0x000001
- SLARK:
- Format:
- ISAD(G)
- Reference (shelfmark):
- Add MS 28841
- Title:
- Cocharelli, Treatise on the Virtues and Vices, and an anonymous prose history of Sicily (fragment)
- Scope & Content:
-
This item comprises 7 parchment leaves from the ‘Cocharelli Codex’, of which only 27 leaves and fragments in three different collections survive.
The original codex included two richly-illuminated texts, the first on the vices and virtues and the second on historical events during the time of Frederic II of Sicily (r. 1295-1337). The prologue to the treatise on vices and virtues explains that the texts were compiled by a member of the Cocharelli family of Genoa based on tales recounted by his grandfather, Pellegrino Cocharelli (fl. 1269-1307). The fragments are particularly well-known for their renderings of birds, animals and insects.
Other leaves and cuttings from the original are British Library, Additional MS 27695 (15 leaves) and Egerton MS 3127 (2 leaves) and Egerton MS 3781 (1 leaf); Cleveland, Cleveland Museum of Art, J.H. Wade Fund n. 1953.152 (1 leaf); and Florence, Museo del Bargello, inv. 2065 (1 leaf).
Contents:
ff. 1: Cocharelli, Treatise on the Virtues and Vices: the vice of wrath;
ff. 2-7: Verses on events from the history of Sicily in the time of Frederick II (b. 1272, d. 1337) (fragment).
Decoration:
1 three-quarter-page miniature in colours and gold (f. 1v). Two geometric full-page borders of rhomboids, roundels, and quatrefoils inhabited by animals and figurative scenes (ff. 1r, 1v). 12 full-page borders in colours and gold consisting of sprays of foliage, flowers and leaves, with human figures, insects, birds, animals and sea-shells (ff. 2r-7v). Numerous drawings of plants and animals in colours and gold interspersed with the text throughout. Text and rubrics in colours and gold throughout.
The subjects of the miniature and borders include:
f. 1r: Birds, reptiles and animals, including lions attacking other creatures and birds fighting each other, a cockerel, an owl, a snake and ducks fighting over a fish;
f. 1v: Shepherds watching over sheep and goats and fighting off wolves, a red devil standing on horseback in the border;
f. 2r: Horned beetles, crickets and a locust;
f. 2v: Caterpillars, snails, and other insects;
f. 3r: Cannibals, a walled town, and exotic animals including a giraffe, lion, camel, and elephant;
f. 3v: Sea-horses, snails, and shells;
f. 4r: Wasps, moths, dragonflies and a caterpillar;
f. 4v: Moths and horned beetles;
f. 5r: Shells and marine creatures;
f. 5v: Poppies, grass, pods and insects, including locusts and grasshoppers;
f. 6r: Spiders and insects;
f. 6v: Rabbits and insects, including a caterpillar, dragonfly, and a moth;
f. 7r: Flowers, fruit and insects, including a grasshopper and a locust;
f. 7v: Flowers, fruit and insects, including a scorpion and a lizard.
The decoration was formerly assigned to a Genoese ‘Monk of Hyères’, thought to be active around 1370. It is now recognised that at least two artists worked on the illuminations between c. 1330-40, with most of the full-page miniatures painted by the so-called ‘Master of the Cocharelli Codex’ (see Fabbri, ‘Maestro del Codice Cocharelli’ (2004), pp. 495-97).
- Collection Area:
- Western Manuscripts
- Project / Collection:
- Additional Manuscripts
- Hierarchy Tree:
- [{ "id" : "032-002020265", "parent" : "#", "text" : "Add MS 28841: Cocharelli, Treatise on the Virtues and Vices, and an anonymous prose history of Sicily (fragment)" , "li_attr" : {"class": "orderable"} }]
- Hierarchy Record Ids:
- 032-002020265
- Is part of:
- not applicable
- Hierarchy:
- 032-002020265
- Container:
- not applicable
- Record Type (Level):
- Fonds
- Extent:
-
7 parchment leaves
- Digitised Content:
- http://access.bl.uk/item/viewer/ark:/81055/vdc_100165148000.0x000001 (digital images currently unavailable)
- Thumbnail:
-
- Languages:
- Latin
- Scripts:
- Latin
- Start Date:
- 1325
- End Date:
- 1340
- Date Range:
- c 1330-1340
- Era:
- CE
- Access:
-
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- User Conditions:
- Letter of introduction required to view this manuscript.
- Physical Characteristics:
-
Materials: Parchment.
Dimensions: 170 x 105 mm (text space: 125 x 80 mm).
Layout: Written in two columns.
Foliation: ff. 7 (+3 unfoliated paper flyleaves at the beginning and 3 at the end).
Script: Gothic.
Binding: Post-1600. British Museum in-house; parchment leaves mounted on paper guards bound together in an album.
- Custodial History:
-
Origin: Italy, N. (Genoa).
Provenance:
The Cocharelli family of Genoa, probably before 1324: the unnamed grandson of Pelegrino Cocharelli describes it as having been made for the children of the family (see Backhouse, The Illuminated Page (1997), no. 115; and Fabbri, 'Maestro del Codice Cocharelli' (2004), pp. 495-97).
Seymour Stocker Kirkup (b. 1788, d. 1880), painter and antiquary: his sale, 6 December 1871, lot 2170; purchased by the British Museum.
- Information About Copies:
-
Complete digital coverage available for this manuscript; see Digital Manuscripts, https://bl.uk/manuscripts/.
Select digital coverage available for this manuscript; see the Catalogue of Illuminated Manuscripts, https://bl.uk/catalogues/illuminatedmanuscripts/.
- Publications:
-
British Museum Catalogue of Additions to the Manuscripts 1854-1875 (London: British Museum, 1887), p. 346.
[Eric G. Millar], British Museum Reproductions from Illuminated Manuscripts, Series 4 (London: British Museum, 1928), p. 13, pl. XXX.
Meyer Schapiro, 'From Mozarabic to Romanesque in Silo', Art Bulletin, 21 (1939), 313-74 (p. 328, n. 27).
A. C. Crombie, 'Cybo d'Hyères: a fourteenth century zoological artist', Endeavour, 9 (1952), 18-37 (figs. 1-2).
Francis Klingender, Animals in Art and Thought to the End of the Middle Ages, ed. by Evelyn Antal and John Harthan (London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1971), p. 479, pl. 295.
G. Evelyn Hutchinson, 'Aposematic insects and the Master of the Brussels Initials', American Scientist, 62 (1974), 161-71.
Brunsdon Yapp, Birds in Medieval Manuscripts (London: British Library, 1981), pl. 40.
Europa und der Orient: 800-1900, ed. by Gereon Sievernich and Hendrik Budde (Berlin: Bertelsmann Lexikon, 1989), no. 5/2 [exhibition catalogue].
Janet Backhouse, The Illuminated Page: Ten Centuries of Manuscript Painting in the British Library (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1997), no. 115.
Aristotle's Animals in the Middle Ages and Renaissance, ed. by Carlos Steel, Guildentops and Pieter Beullen (Leuven: University Press, 1999), p. 376, n. 47.
Francesca Fabbri, 'Il codice "Cocharelli": osservazione e ipotesi per un manoscritto genovese del XIV sec', in Tessuti, oreficerie, miniature in Liguria XIII-XV secoli, ed. by A. R. Calderoni Masetti, C. Di Fabio and M. Marcenaro, Atti del Convegno Internazionale di Studi: Genova-Bordighera, 22-25 May 1995 (Bordighera: Istituto Internazionale di Studi Liguri, 1999), pp. 305-20, figs. 2 [f. 5v], 4 [f. 7], 5 [f. 15v].
Robert Gibbs, 'Antifonario N: A Bolognese choirbook in the context of Genoese illumination between 1285 and 1385,' in Tessuti, oreficerie, miniature in Liguria XIII-XV secoli, ed. by A. R. Calderoni Masetti, C. Di Fabio and M. Marcenaro, Atti del Convegno Internazionale di Studi: Genova-Bordighera, 22-25 May 1995 (Bordighera: Istituto Internazionale di Studi Liguri, 1999), 247-78 (pp. 270-78, figs. 20-22).
Francesco Mezzalira, Bestie e bestiari: la rappresentazione degli animali dalla preistoria al rinascimento (Turin: Umberto Allemandi, 2001), pp. 42, 46.
Debra Higgs Strickland, Saracens, Demons, & Jews: Making Monsters in Medieval Art (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2003), fig. 9.
Francesca Fabbri, 'Maestro del Codice Cocharelli', Dizionario biografico dei miniatori Italiani: Secoli IX-XVI, ed. by Milvia Bollati (Milan: Bonnard, 2004), pp. 495-97.
Elizabeth Morrison, Beasts: Factual & Fantastic (Los Angeles: J. Paul Getty Museum, 2007), p. 54.
Margaret Scott, Medieval Dress & Fashion (London: British Library, 2007), pl. 51, 54.
Joe Flatman, Ships and Shipping in Medieval Manuscripts (London: British Library, 2009), pl. 6.
Francesca Fabbri, 'Il codice Cocharelli fra Europa, Mediterraneo e Oriente', in La pittura in Liguria: Il Medioevo secoli XII-XIX, ed. by Guiliana Algeri and Anna de Floriani (Genoa: De Ferrari, 2011), pp. 289-310.
Francesca Fabbri, 'Vizi e virtù in due codici realizzati a Genova nel Trecento fra seduzioni d’oriente e apporti toscani', Rivista di Storia della miniatura, 17 (2013), 95-106 (pp. 95-100, 106).
Chiara Concina, 'Unfolding the Cocharelli Codex: Some Preliminary Observations about the Text, with a Theory about the Order of the Fragments', Medioevi: Rivista di letterature e culture medievali, 2 (2016),189-265.
Anne Dunlop, 'Ornament and Vice: The Foreign, the Mobile, and the Cocharelli Fragments', in Histories of Ornament: From Global to Local, ed. by Gülru Necipoğlu and Alina Payne (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2016), pp. 228-37.
Simonetta Nicolini, 'Una notizia bibliografica per i frammenti Cocharelli', Intrecci d’arte, 5 (2016), 9-22.
- Material Type:
- Archives and Manuscripts
- Legal Status:
- Not Public Record(s)