An unusual humanistic compilation - photo 1
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An unusual humanistic compilation

Lot 49
11.06.2024 14:00UTC +00:00
Classic
Starting price
£ 40 000
AuctioneerCHRISTIE'S
Event locationUnited Kingdom, London
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ID 1214892
Lot 49 | An unusual humanistic compilation
Estimate value
£ 40 000 – 60 000
An unusual humanistic compilation
Marcus Tullius Cicero (106-43 BC), Celsus Maffeus (c.1425–1503), et al., miscellaneous texts in Latin, illuminated manuscript on vellum [North-East Italy (Verona or Ferrara?), third quarter of the 15th century]
An exemplary humanistic manuscript, with elegant script and decoration, combining Classical and contemporary texts, in a contemporary binding.

205 × 135mm, 60 leaves plus two original flyleaves (torn), complete, collation: 1-610, horizontal catchwords, 26 lines, ruled space: 130 × 75mm, written in brown ink in a small humanistic minuscule bookhand, spaces for rubrics, in the fourth text are guides to the rubricator (‘do’ and ‘phi’) to indicate which interlocutor is speaking, a few marginalia in neat 15th/16th-century hands, 2 three-line illuminated initials, gold on blue, green and red ground, 3 larger white vine-scroll initials, 4-5 lines, burnished gold, on blue ground, the intertwined vine-stems infilled in red and green (slight worming in blank inner margin of ff.35–39).

Binding:
Contemporary binding of blind-tooled brown leather over wood boards, in the centre a triple filleted circle filled with knot stamps, inner panels containing knot stamps and other small tools, outer border of ropework ornament (spine restored, upper cover a little rubbed), brass catches each stamped with the paschal lamb, but only stubs of leather hasps present, in marbled paper covered wooden case.

Provenance:
(1) The illumination points to northeastern Italy as the origin for the manuscript, and the very rare fourth text suggests that it may have been produced in Verona.

(2) Sold at Sotheby’s, 18 June 1991, lot 87, with full-page colour plate, and small colour plate of the binding; bought by ‘Core’, i.e.:

(3) Massimiliano Favia del Core (1927–1994), of Lugano; sold at Christie's, 3 April 1996, lot 4 (with full-page colour frontispiece and full-page monochrome plate of the binding); bought by:

(4) The Schøyen Collection, MS 2104.

Content:
Marcus Tullius Cicero, De senectute, the dialogue on old age written in 45 or 44 BC: ‘O Tite si quid ego adiuto […] probare possitis. FINIS’, ff.1-21; Cicero, De amicitia, the dialogue on friendship written in 44 BC: ‘Quintus mutius augur scevola […] prestabilius putetis’, ff.21v-44v; Cicero, Paradoxica Stoicorum: ‘Animadvorti [sic] Brute sepe Catonem […] existimanda sunt &c. FINIS.’, ff.45-55v; Celsus Maffeus (Celso Maffei), of Verona, Dialogus de contemptu mundi, in which three interlocutors (Dorias, Philonus, and Hilarius) debate the merits of living in the town or the country: ‘Dorias civis Athicus iter faciens […] advesperascit. FINIS.’, ff.56-59; Pseudo-Demosthenes, Epistola ad Alexandrum Magnum in the Latin translation of the Florentine humanist Leonardo Bruni Aretino (1369–1444): ‘Nichil habet rex alexander vel fortuna tua […] consecutus es. FINIS’, ff.59v-60v.

The fourth text is especially rare. Bloomfield, Latin Works on the Virtues and Vices, 1979, knew of only four manuscripts, one at Perugia, the other three (of which one is only an excerpt) in the cathedral library at Verona; the Mirabile website adds only two more: one in the Royal Collection at the British Library, and one at the Staatsbibliothek, Berlin. The text was printed c.1495 at Brescia; most copies of this incunable edition are still in the Veneto.
Place of origin:Italy, Europe
Auction house category:Books and manuscripts
Address of auction CHRISTIE'S
8 King Street, St. James's
SW1Y 6QT London
United Kingdom
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11.06.2024 – 11.06.2024
Phone +44 (0)20 7839 9060
Email
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