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Harley MS 621

Record Id:

040-002046450

Hierarchy Root Ancestor Record Id:

040-002046450

MDARK:

ark:/81055/vdc_100000000652.0x00007f

LARK:

SLARK:

Format:

ISAD(G)

Reference (shelfmark):

Harley MS 621

Title:

Du cas des nobles hommes et femmes: a translation of Giovanni Boccaccio's De casibus virorum et feminarum illustrium by Laurent de Premierfait

Scope & Content:

Du cas des nobles hommes et femmes: a translation of Giovanni Boccaccio's De casibus virorum et feminarum illustrium by Laurent de Premierfait. Imperfect. The beginning of Book I, chapter 1 is lost. Incipit (f. 1r): 'premiers partus fut grant et telle que a elle aucune aultre ne se compare'. Folios 409-16 (quire 52) are bound out of order; they should follow f. 424, which contains the first page of Book VIII, chapter 24. Soil and wear on f. 424v, however, indicates that this has been in the final position for some time. This misplaced quire ends incompletely, partway through chapter 26, with a catchword at the bottom, suggesting the original presence of some additional pages, now lost: Explicit (f. 416v): 'Et pour ce que Robert filz des ditz Raymond seneschal de la court du Roy Robert fut par Icelle Iehanne nomme en Institue grant seneschal du Royaume'.

Decoration:

The program of decoration, which was intended to be extensive, has been left unfinished: numerous spaces left for miniatures are empty. Illustration has been completed on the large drawings on the first page of each book, and for the first few of the smaller drawings at the heads of chapters.

8 large tinted drawings with partial borders in colours and gold at the beginning of the first chapter of each book: f. 36r (anointing of Saul), f. 71r (Poverty wrestling with Fortune), f. 120r (Boccaccio), f. 168r (the death of Berenice, queen of Egypt), f. 217r (Fortune and her wheel), f. 274r (famous assassinations), f. 315r (Boccaccio conversing with Petrarch), f. 369v (the death of Brunichildis).

4 smaller tinted drawings at the beginning of each of the first few chapters: f. 1v (Adam and Eve cast out of Paradise, Cain killing Abel with a club), f. 2v (Construction of the Tower of Babel, with Noah's Ark in the background), ff. 3v, 4r.

4 underdrawings in ink at the beginning of the next few chapters: ff. 6v, 7v, 9v (the life of Oedipus), f. 11v (the story of Atreus and Thyestes).

Partial border in colours and gold inhabited by a peacock and a jay: f. 318v.

8 large initials in colours and gold at the beginning of the first chapter of each book: ff. 36r, 71r, 120r, 168r, 217r, 274r, 315r, 369v.

Large initials in red and blue. Plain initials in red or blue. Rubrics in red. Paraphs in red or blue. Capitals marked in yellow.

Collection Area:

Western Manuscripts

Project / Collection:

Harley Collection

Hierarchy Tree:

[{ "id" : "040-002046450", "parent" : "#", "text" : "Harley MS 621: Du cas des nobles hommes et femmes: a translation of Giovanni Boccaccio's De casibus virorum et feminarum illustrium by Laurent de…" , "li_attr" : {"class": "orderable"} }]

Hierarchy Record Ids:

032-002045828
040-002046450

Is part of:

Harley MS 1-7661 : Harley Manuscripts

Harley MS 621 : Du cas des nobles hommes et femmes: a translation of Giovanni Boccaccio's De casibus virorum et feminarum illustrium by Laurent…

Hierarchy:

032-002045828[0621]/040-002046450

Container:

View / search within Archive / Collection: Harley MS 1-7661

Record Type (Level):

File

Extent:

1 volume

Digitised Content:

Languages:

French, Old

Scripts:

Latin

Start Date:

1450

End Date:

1474

Date Range:

3rd quarter of the 15th century

Era:

Access:

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User Conditions:

Letter of introduction required to view this manuscript

Physical Characteristics:

Materials: paper.

Dimensions: 395 x 275 mm (text space: 265 x 190 mm) (in two columns).

Watermark: 'Armoiries trois fleurs-de-lis', similar to C. M. Briquet, Les Filigranes: Dictionnaire historique des marques du papier dès leur apparition vers 1282 jusqu'en 1600: A Facsimile of the 1907 Edition with Supplementary Material, ed. by Allan Stevenson, 4 vols (Amsterdam: Paper Publications Society, 1968), nos. 392 (used in Grammont 1463) and 1741 (used in Troyes 1470).

Foliation: ff. 424 (ff. [i-ii] and [425-27] are unfoliated modern paper flyleaves, of which ff. [i] and [427] are marbled on one side).

Collation: 1⁸-53⁸. Folio 52 is misbound: ff. 409-416 should occur at the end.

Script: Gothic cursive.

Binding: Post-1600. Blue leather with gold tooling and the Harley arms and motto; marbled endpapers.

Custodial History:

Origin:

France.

Provenance:

Sir Simonds D'Ewes (1602-1650), 1st Baronet, diarist, antiquary, and friend of Sir Robert Cotton (see Wright 1972): purchased by him for 3 s. (see Watson 1966).

Sir Simonds D'Ewes (d. 1722), 3rd Baronet and grandson of the former: inherited and later sold the D’Ewes library to Robert Harley on 4 October 1705 for £450 (see Watson 1966).

The Harley Collection, formed by Robert Harley (1661-1724), 1st Earl of Oxford and Mortimer, politician, and Edward Harley (1689-1741), 2nd Earl of Oxford and Mortimer, book collector and patron of the arts.

Edward Harley bequeathed the library to his widow, Henrietta Cavendish Harley, née Holles (1694-1755) during her lifetime and thereafter to their daughter, Margaret Cavendish Bentinck (1715-1785), Duchess of Portland; the manuscripts were sold by the Countess and the Duchess in 1753 to the nation for £10,000 (a fraction of their contemporary value) under the Act of Parliament that also established the British Museum; the Harley manuscripts form one of the foundation collections of the British Library: old British Museum press mark: 41. B. 10 (f. 1r).

Administrative Context:

France.

Publications:

A Catalogue of the Harleian Manuscripts in the British Museum, 4 vols (London: Eyre and Strahan, 1808-1812), I (1808), p. 390 (no. 621).

Lydgate's Fall of Princes, ed. by Henry Bergen, 3 vols, Early English Text Society, 121-23 (London: Early English Text Society, 1924), I, p. xiii.

Fritz Saxl and Hans Meier, Verzeichnis astrologischer und mythologischer illustrierter Handschriften des lateinischen Mittelalters, ed. by Harry Bober, 4 vols (London: Warburg Institute, 1916-66), III: Handschriften in englischen Bibliotheken (1953), p. 147.

Patricia M. Gathercole, 'The Manuscripts of Laurent de Premierfait's 'Du Cas des Nobles' (Boccaccio's 'De Casibus Virorum Illustrium')', Italica, 32 (1955), 14-21 (p. 19).

Andrew G. Watson, The Library of Sir Simonds D'Ewes (London: British Museum, 1966), no. A312.

Cyril Ernest Wright, Fontes Harleiani: A Study of the Sources of the Harleian Collection of Manuscripts in the British Museum (London: British Museum, 1972), p. 131.

Giovanni Boccaccio: Catalogue of an Exhibition held in the Reference Division of the British Library 3 October to 31 December 1975 (London: British Museum Publications, 1975), no. 32 [exhibition catalogue].

Yoshiaki Todoroki, 'A List of Miniatures of Goddess Fortune in Medieval Manuscripts', Cultural and Social Sciences 41 (1990), 71-114 (p. 89).

Catherine Reynolds, 'Illustrated Boccaccio Manuscripts in the British Library (London)', Studi sul Boccaccio, 17 (1988), 113-81 (pp. 137-41).

Catherine Reynolds, 'I codici del Boccaccio illustrati in Inghilterra', in Boccaccio visualizzato: Narrare per parole e per immagini fra Medioevo e Rinascimento, ed. by Vittore Branca, Biblioteca di Storia dell'arte, 30, 3 vols (Torino: Giulio Einaudi, 1999), III: Opere d'arte d'origine francese, fiamminga, inglese, spagnola, tedesca, pp. 267-86 (pp. 275-77, no. 66).

Material Type:

Archives and Manuscripts

Legal Status:

Not Public Record(s)

Names:

Boccaccio, Giovanni, poet and scholar, 1313-1375
D'Ewes, Simonds, 3rd Baronet, grandson of the Antiquary, c 1670-1722
D’Ewes, Simonds, 1st Baronet, diarist and antiquary, 1602-1650,
   see also http://isni.org/isni/0000000083393524,
   see also http://viaf.org/viaf/12656415
Harley, Edward, second earl of Oxford and Mortimer, book collector and patron of the arts, 2 Jun 1689-16 Jun 1741,
   see also http://isni.org/isni/0000000108078249,
   see also http://viaf.org/viaf/160524259
Harley, Henrietta Cavendish, Countess of Oxford and Mortimer, née Holles, patron of architecture, 4 Feb 1694-9 Dec 1755,
   see also http://isni.org/isni/0000000030125833,
   see also http://viaf.org/viaf/6045563
Harley, Robert, first Earl of Oxford and Mortimer, politician, 5 Dec 1661-21 May 1724,
   see also http://isni.org/isni/0000000083423906
Premierfait, Laurent, secretary of the Duc de Berri, c 1365-1418

Related Material:

Entry in A Catalogue of the Harleian Manuscripts in the British Museum, 4 vols (London: Eyre and Strahan, 1808-1812), I (1808), p. 390 (no. 621):

'A Book in fol. imperfect at the beginning & end; wherein were contained,

The nine Books of John Boccace, de Casu illustrium virorum & foeminarum, translated into French. Twas design'd to adorn this Book with a Picture before each Chapter: but there are but few (in Comparison) done. However, that of the Author, and of Francis Petrarch at the beginning of the VIIIth Book, may be worth looking upon'.