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Add MS 15277
- Record Id:
- 032-002086982
- Hierarchy Root Ancestor Record Id:
- 032-002086982
- MDARK:
- ark:/81055/vdc_100000000052.0x000230
- LARK:
- SLARK:
- Format:
- ISAD(G)
- Reference (shelfmark):
- Add MS 15277
- Title:
-
Old Testament Books of Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers, Deuteronomy and Joshua (the 'Paduan Bible Picture Book')
- Scope & Content:
-
Contents:
A cycle of miniatures illustrating the Old Testament, from Exodus I:11 to the end of the Book of Joshua, with short captions in Italian. All pages are fully illuminated, with the exception of 12 text pages (ff. 19v, 20r, 24v-30r, 56v-57v), one half text page (f. 24r) and blank folios at ff. 20v, 30v, three unfoliated leaves following f. 57v and three following f. 60v, some with empty frames for images.
Part of the original manuscript, containing Genesis and Ruth, is now Rovigo, Biblioteca dell'Accademia dei Concordi, MS 212.
Decoration:
517 miniatures in ink with colour washes in red, green, blue and black, framed in red and black. There are five full-page miniatures, three illustrating Exodus (ff. 16v, 17r, 17v) and two at the beginning of the Books of Leviticus and Numbers (ff. 21r, 31r); the remaining miniatures are arranged three to four to a page.
The layout and style is unique in an Italian manuscript, but is similar to that of the 'Egerton Genesis Picture Book', Egerton MS 1894 (Pacht, 'Giottesque Episode' (1943), p. 61).
The subjects of the miniatures are:
ff. 1-19r: Illustrations of the Book of Exodus including full-page images of the founding of the Ark (f.16v), the Menora or Candeliero (f. 17r) and Aaron as a priest (f. 17v);
f. 21r: Frontispiece to the Book of Leviticus: the Tabernacle and Ark with God and angels;
ff. 21v-24r: Illustrations of the Book of Leviticus;
f. 31r: Frontispiece to the Book of Numbers: the Tabernacle and Ark with God and angels;
ff. 31v-56r: Illustrations of the Book of Numbers;
ff. 58r-60r: Illustrations of the Book of Deuteronomy;
ff. 61r-80v: Illustrations of the Book of Joshua.
The miniatures are attributed in the Dizionario Biografico dei Miniatori Italiani: Secoli IX-XVI (2004) to the eponymous 'Maestri della Bibbia istoriata Padovana,' a workshop associated with Francesco Novello and the Carrara court in Padua at the end of the 14th century. The style is similar to the work of Jacopo da Verona, who painted the frescoes in the Oratory of San Michele in Padua in c. 1397. Also attributed to this workshop are the 3-volume Antiphonary of Santa Guistina a Monselice (Padua, Biblioteca Capitolare, MSS E18, E19 and E20) and two Psalters in Modena, Biblioteca Estense MSS Lat. 1017 and Lat. 1020. For further discussion see 'Maestri della Bibbia Istoriata padovana' in Dizionario Biografico (2004).
- Collection Area:
- Western Manuscripts
- Project / Collection:
- Additional Manuscripts
- Hierarchy Tree:
- [{ "id" : "032-002086982", "parent" : "#", "text" : "Add MS 15277: Old Testament Books of Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers, Deuteronomy and Joshua (the 'Paduan Bible Picture Book')" , "li_attr" : {"class": "orderable"} }]
- Hierarchy Record Ids:
- 032-002086982
- Is part of:
- not applicable
- Hierarchy:
- 032-002086982
- Container:
- not applicable
- Record Type (Level):
- Fonds
- Extent:
-
A parchment codex, 80 folios
- Digitised Content:
- http://www.bl.uk/manuscripts/FullDisplay.aspx?ref=Add_MS_15277 (digital images currently unavailable)
- Thumbnail:
-
- Languages:
- Italian
- Scripts:
- Latin
- Start Date:
- 1395
- End Date:
- 1405
- Date Range:
- c 1400
- Era:
- CE
- Access:
-
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- User Conditions:
- Letter of introduction required to view this manuscript
- Physical Characteristics:
-
Materials: parchment.
Dimensions: 325 x 230 mm.
Foliation: ff. 80 (plus 3 unfoliated blank parchment leaves with frames for miniatures ruled after f. 57 and 3 unfoliated blank parchment leaves after f. 60; plus 1 unfoliated parchment flyleaf and 2 unfoliated paper flyleaves at the beginning and 2 unfoliated paper flyleaves at the end).
Script: Gothic.
Binding: Post-1600. Dark blue leather with gold tooling.
- Custodial History:
-
Origin: Italy, N. (Padua?).
Provenance:
Augustus Frederick, Duke of Sussex (b. 1773, d. 1843): his armorial bookplate on f. [i] verso, inscribed in brown ink '1 - CCXXXII', referring to the fact that this is described as no. 1 on page 232 of the library catalogue. A blank cartouche in the plinth depicted on the book-plate is inscribed with the shelf-mark 'VI.H.l.2'; bought by the British Museum at his sale Messrs Evans, 31 July-2 August 1844, lot 249 (a note on f. [iii]).
- Information About Copies:
- Complete digital coverage available for this manuscript; see Digitised Manuscripts [http://www.bl.uk/manuscripts].
- Publications:
-
Catalogue of Additions to the Manuscripts in the British Museum in the Years 1841-1845 (London: British Museum, 1850), p. 121.
Walter de Gray Birch and Henry Jenner, Early Drawings and Illuminations: An Introduction to the Study of Ilustrated Manuscripts(London: Bagster and Sons, 1879), p. 10.
[J. A. Herbert], Illuminated Manuscripts and Bindings of Manuscripts Exhibited in The Grenville Library, Guide to the Exhibited Manuscripts, 3 (Oxford: British Museum, 1923), no. 91.
Otto Pächt, 'A Giottesque Episode in English Illumination' Journal of the Warburg and Courtauld Institutes, 6 (1943), p. 61, n. 1.
G. Folena and G. L. Mellini, Bibbia istoriata Padovana della fine del trecento: Pentateuco, Giosu, Ruth (Milan, 1962) [facsimile edition].
Francis Wormald, 'Bible Illustration in Medieval Manuscripts', in The Cambridge History of the Bible, 3 vols (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1963-1970), II, The West from the Fathers to the Reformation, ed. by G. W. H. Lampe (1969), pp. 309-37 (p. 320).
Carl Huter, 'Panel Paintings by Illuminators', Arte Veneta, 28 (1974), pp. 9-16.
Kurt Weitzman and H.L. Kessler, The Cotton Genesis: British Library Codex Cotton Otho B. VI (Princeton, 1986), p.26.
Susan M. Arensberg, 'The Padua Bible and the Late Medieval Biblical Picture Book' (unpublished PhD thesis, John Hopkins University, 1986).
Lino Leonardi, 'Inventario dei manoscritti biblici', Melanges de l’Ecole francaise de Rome: Moyen-Age, 105:2 (1993), 863-86 (p. 874).
Max Seidel, 'Hochzeitsikonographie im Trecento', Mitteilungen des Kunsthistorischen Institutes in Florenz, 34 (1994), 1-47.
Caroline S. Hull, 'Rylands MS French 5: the Form and Function of a Medieval Bible Picture Book', Bulletin of the John Rylands Library, 77 (1995), 3-24 (p. 7).
Illuminations in the The Robert Lehman Collection, ed. by Sandra Hindman and others (New York: The Metropolitan Museum of Art, 1997), pp. 173-75, 237.
'Parole Dipinte', in La miniatura a Padova: dal medioevo al settecento, ed. by Giordana Mariani Canova, Giovanna Baldissin Molli and Federica Toniolo (Modena: Franco Cosimo Panini, 1999), pp. 161-73, nos 58-69.
Paolo Pezzolo, Alessandra Marangoni and Federica Toniolo, Visibile parlare: la ‘Bibbia istoriata padovana’ tra parola e immagine (Modena, 1999) [CD Rom facsimile of Rovigo, Biblioteca dell'Accademia dei Concordi, MS 212]
K. Maekawa, Narrative and Experience: Innovations in Thirteenth-Century Picture Books (Frankfurt am Main, 2000), p. 207.
Lucy Freeman Sandler, 'The Illustration of the Psalms in Fourteenth-Century English Manuscripts: Three Psalters of the Bohun Family', in Reading Texts and Images: Essays on Medieval and Renaissance Art and Patronage in honour of Margaret M. Manion, ed. by Bernard J. Muir (Exeter: University of Exeter Press, 2002), pp. 123-51 (p. 18, fig. 45a).
'Maestri della Bibbia Istoriata padovana', in Dizionario Biografico dei Miniatori Italiani: Secoli IX-XVI, ed. by Milvia Bollati (Milan: Silvestre Bonnard, 2004), pp. 424-27.
Sarit Shalev-Eyni, 'The Antecedents of the Padua Bible and its Parallels in Spain', Arte Medievale, 4.2 (2005), 83-94 (p. 91).
Sarit Shalev-Eyni, 'In the Days of the Barley Harvest: The Iconography of Ruth', Artibus et Historiae, 26:51 (2005), 37-57.
Michelle Brown, The Holkham Bible: A Facsimile (London: British Library, 2007), p. 14.
Scot McKendrick and Kathleen Doyle, Bible Manuscripts: 1400 Years of Scribes and Scripture (London: British Library, 2007), p. 136, fig. 123.
Marcia Kupfer, 'Abraham circumcises himself: A scene at the endgame of Jewish Utility to Christian Art', in Judaism and Christian Art: Aesthetic Anxieties from the Catacombs to Colonialism, ed. by Herbert L. Kessler and David Nirenberg (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2011), pp. 143-82 (p. 181).
Sabina Magrini, 'Vernacular Bibles, Biblical Quotations and the Paris Bible in Italy from the Thirteenth to the Fifteenth Century: A First Report’, in Form and Function in the Late Medieval Bible, ed. by Eyal Poleg and Laura Light (Leiden: Brill, 2013), pp. 237-59 (pp. 241-42, 246).
- Material Type:
- Archives and Manuscripts
- Legal Status:
- Not Public Record(s)