Ralph Knevet (1600-1671)
10.12.2025 12:00UTC +00:00
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CHRISTIE'S| Auctioneer | CHRISTIE'S |
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| Место проведения | Великобритания, London |
| Комиссия | see on Website% |
ID 1514476
Лот 56 | Ralph Knevet (1600-1671)
Оценочная стоимость
15000GBP £ 15 000 – 20 000
Autograph manuscripts of eleven poems from his sequence A Gallery to the Temple, n.d. [1640s]
The poems comprising 'The Deprecation', 'Solitude', ['Resolution'], 'Blindnes', ['L'Envoy'], 'Newyears gift', 'Sciences', 'Teares', 'Security', 'The Bankrupt' and 'Griefe'; together approximately 340 lines of verse in two columns, on three pages, 425 x 273mm, written on the blank versos of three bifolia extracted from an edition of an Ortelius atlas. The manuscripts are working drafts including a number of cancellations, insertions and emendations; title to 'Blindnes' supplied in another hand, 'L'Envoy' concluding with an apparently unpublished four-line stanza ('Unto the holy three in one ...'), 'Griefe' preceded by three cancelled lines, the third page with the autograph superscription 'Lord in thy wroth'.
Autograph working drafts of devotional works written on blank versos of leaves from an Ortelius atlas: the 'best poems' of this 17th century poet.
The eleven poems in this group are from Knevet's 82-poem series A Gallery to the Temple, comprising numbers 3-12 and the concluding poem 'L'Envoy': they appear to predate the fair copy (BL Add. MS 27447), and contain numerous variants from the published text, while 'L'Envoy’ ends with a 4-line stanza which is otherwise apparently unknown. With the exception of 'L'Envoy', the order of the poems corresponds with that in the fair copy.
'A Gallery to the Temple (BL, Add. MS 27447) contains Knevet's best poems. It remained in manuscript until careful editions by G. Pellegrini (R. Knevet, 'A Gallery to the Temple', Studi e Testi, 6, 1954) and A.M. Charles (1966). Probably written in the 1640s, it was subsequently inscribed for 'Sir Robert Paston's Lady' (Shorter Poems, 277) [...] As his title, from Giambattista Marino's La galeria (1619) suggests, Knevet means to present foreign spoils. Rejecting Italian superstition and English coldness ('The Extremes'), his devotional warmth, like Crashaw's, is capable of surprise ('Truth'; 'The Feast')' (ODNB).
A relative of the great Norfolk families of Knyvett and Paston, Ralph Knevet was a pensioner at Peterhouse, Cambridge, from 1616 to 1618, and thereafter 'was probably tutor in the Oxnead household of his patron William Paston in Norfolk' (ODNB), accompanying Paston on a tour to Florence and Rome in 1638-9. Paston presented him to the living of St Michael's, Lyng, Norfolk, in 1652, and he died there twenty years later. Knevet's earliest published work is Stratiōtikon, or, A Discourse of Militarie Discipline (1628); he wrote a masque, Rhodon and Iris, presented at the Society of Florists in Norwich, and his Funerall Elegies (1637) commemorate the death of his patron's wife, Lady Katherine Bute, in the previous year. The remainder of his poetic production, including a three-book supplement to Spenser's Faerie Queene, remained, like A Gallery to the Temple, in manuscript until the 20th century. His works are now recognised as ‘a part of the great tradition of Herbert, Vaughan, and Crashaw in seventeenth-century devotional poetry’ (Charles, p.5).
Although the use of the versos of Ortelius maps for poetic composition seems unusual, not to say extravagant, the survival of at least two other examples at the Brotherton Library, University of Leeds, suggests Knevet may have drafted the entirety of A Gallery to the Temple on the blank leaves of an atlas, presumably a copy from William Paston's library. The two examples at the Brotherton were both acquired at auction, the first comprising two or three poems, nos 45 and 47 (and perhaps 46?) of A Gallery, on the verso of a map of Poland (foliated 58), bought at Sotheby's, 14 December 1976, Lot 227 (£170), the second comprising five poems, nos 71-75 of A Gallery, on the verso of a map of the kingdom of Prester John (foliated 68), bought at Christie's, 14 July 2021, lot 33 (£13,750). Amy M. Charles. The Shorter Poems of Ralph Knevet: A Critical Edition. Ohio: Ohio State University Press, 1966.
The poems are written on the blank versos of three bifolia extracted from an edition of Ortelius's atlas Theatrum Orbis Terrarum:
[Abraham ORTELIUS (1527-1598)]. Larii lacus vulgo Comensis descriptio auct. Paulo Jovio [with:] Thusciae descriptio auctore Hieronymo Bellarmato [and:] Senensis ditionis, accurata descrip. ... Corsica ... Marcha Anconae olim Picenum. 1572. [Antwerp: c.1573-1575]. Double-page hand-coloured engraved maps, 370 x 435mm (plate mark), 425 x 550mm (sheet), foliated 46-48; with a further double-page map, Turingiae noviss. descript. per Iohannem Mellinger Halens., foliated 29, with a three-line Latin annotation in another hand, 'paupertas summa nobilitas ...'.
| Автор: | Абрахам Ортелий (1527 - 1598) |
|---|---|
| Место происхождения: | Англия, Северная Европа, Западная Европа, Европа, Нидерланды, Великобритания |
| Категория аукционного дома: | Письма, документы и рукописи, Книги и рукописи |
| Автор: | Абрахам Ортелий (1527 - 1598) |
|---|---|
| Место происхождения: | Англия, Северная Европа, Западная Европа, Европа, Нидерланды, Великобритания |
| Категория аукционного дома: | Письма, документы и рукописи, Книги и рукописи |
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