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Harley MS 2550

Record Id:

040-002048381

Hierarchy Root Ancestor Record Id:

040-002048381

MDARK:

ark:/81055/vdc_100000000761.0x000192

LARK:

SLARK:

Format:

ISAD(G)

Reference (shelfmark):

Harley MS 2550

Title:

Propertius, Elegies

Scope & Content:

A humanist copy of the poetry of Propertius from Renaissance Florence.

Contents:

ff. lr-82v: Propertius, Elegies, books 1-4. The title. 'Propertii aurelii nautae liber foeliciter incipit' has been added by a second scribe, who also wrote ff. 39r-82r.

Decoration:

No initials executed. Rubricated titles in section ff. 39r-82v only.

Collection Area:

Western Manuscripts

Project / Collection:

Harley Collection

Hierarchy Tree:

[{ "id" : "040-002048381", "parent" : "#", "text" : "Harley MS 2550: Propertius, Elegies" , "li_attr" : {"class": "orderable"} }]

Hierarchy Record Ids:

032-002045828
040-002048381

Is part of:

Harley MS 1-7661 : Harley Manuscripts

Harley MS 2550 : Propertius, Elegies

Hierarchy:

032-002045828[2551]/040-002048381

Container:

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

Record Type (Level):

File

Extent:

1 volume

Digitised Content:

Languages:

Latin

Scripts:

Latin

Start Date:

1450

End Date:

1499

Date Range:

2nd half of the 15th century

Era:

Access:

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User Conditions:

Physical Characteristics:

Material: paper, two types of watermarks: (1) scales, closest to Briquet, Les Filigranes, num. 2444 (Venice 1469, Fabriano 1471-87); (2) a wagon, closest to Briquet, Les Filigranes, num. 3544 (Lucca 1434, Rome 1459-60, Lucca 1463-79).

Dimensions: 210 x 145 mm (text space 150 x 80 mm for ff. 1r-38v; 155 x 80 mm, for ff. 39r-82r).

Foliation: ff. i + 85 + i (f. i at the beginning and f. i at the end of the volume are modern flyleaves).

Collation: 1¹⁰, 2⁸, 3-8¹⁰, 9⁸,vertical catchwords.

Script: Humanistic, written by two hands. The first (ff. 1r-38v) more formal, the second (ff. 39r-82v) more cursive; the second has also annotated and added titles to ff.1r-38v.

Binding: British Museum in-house, rebound in 1966.

Custodial History:

Origin: Italy, perhaps Florence. The first part of the manuscript is a close descendant of Coluccio Salutati's (b. 1331, d. 1406) copy (Florence, Biblioteca Laurenziana Plut. 36,49), perhaps through another manuscript in Florence (Biblioteca Laurenziana, San Marco 690); it may be Florentine.

Provenance:

John Gibson (fl. 1720-1726), dealer: sold to Edward Harley on 13 February 1723/4 (Wright, Fontes Harleiani (1972), p. 162.).

The Harley Collection, formed by Robert Harley (b. 1661, d. 1724), 1st earl of Oxford and Mortimer, politician, and Edward Harley (b. 1689, d. 1741), 2nd earl of Oxford and Mortimer, book collector and patron of the arts, inscribed as usual by their librarian, Humfrey Wanley ‘13 die Februarij, A.D. 1723/4’ (f. 1r).

Edward Harley bequeathed the library to his widow, Henrietta Cavendish, née Holles (b. 1694, d. 1755) during her lifetime and thereafter to their daughter, Margaret Cavendish Bentinck (b. 1715, d. 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.

Publications:

A Catalogue of the Harleian Manuscripts in the British Museum, 4 vols (London: Eyre and Strahan, 1808-12), II (1808), p. 699. num. 2550.

Charles M. Briquet, Les Filigranes. Dictionnaire historique des marques du papier dés leurs apparition vers jusqu'en 1600, 4 vols. (Paris, A. Picard & Fils & Genève A. Jullien von Martino Publishing, 2007).

James L. Butrica, The Manuscript Tradition of Propertius, Supplement 17 to Phoenix (Toronto, 1984), pp. 247-48.

Alice Catherine Ferguson, The Manuscripts of Propertius (Chicago, 1934), p. 33.

Anna Rose, Filippo Beroaldo der Ältere und sein Beitrag zur Properz-Überlieferung, Beiträge zur Altertumskunde, 156 (Leipzig: Saur, 2001), pp. 221, 225.

C. E. Wright, Fontes Harleiani: A Study of the Sources of the Harleian Collection of Manuscripts in the British Museum (London: British Museum, 1972), pp. 162, 411.

Material Type:

Archives and Manuscripts

Legal Status:

Not Public Record(s)

Names:

Gibson, John, book-dealer, fl 1720-1726
Propertius, Sextus, 45 BC-15 BC

Places:

England