Western Manuscripts and Miniatures

Although described in 1958, this is the only Calendar page from the celebrated Llangattock Breviary that has surfaced since it was dismembered in the 1980s.

205 x 200 mm. Single leaf, ruled in plummet for four columns of 35 lines (written space: 166 x 143 mm), written in dark brown and red in a late gothic book hand, capitals touched with yellow, two four-lines illuminated initials in blue, pink, and green on burnished gold ground extending into the margins, accompanied on the verso with a full-height bar-border of pink, green, and blue motifs on burnished gold ground framed with black, extending into hairline tendrils of colored flowers, gold disks and leaves, on the recto with a floral composition of the same (faints in the brown ink, slight damp stain in the upper margin, the lower margin trimmed without affecting the text, else in very good condition).

This calendar leaf is a dazzling example of Ferrarese illumination at its highest, offering a delicate composition of hairline tendrils with colored flowers and gold disks, alongside gold bar borders terminating in prismatic ends. It can be identified as the only known calendar leave of the Llangattock Breviary to resurface since it was dismembered in the 1980s. We are grateful to Christopher de Hamel for pointing out that it also appeared in a catalogue issued by Kenneth Rendell in 1979, although it remains unrecorded in the literature on this important manuscript. In 1958, the auction description reported that every calendar leaf of the manuscript had had their lower margins entirely trimmed, which is the case here. This operation, which did not affect the text, might have been prompted by the inclusion of calendar scenes in the lower margin. Upon comparison with other single leaves of the Llangattock Breviary, some of which are included in the present sale, the parchment of our calendar leaf shares an identical width, grain, and texture, while the ruling method, the script, and the inks are also identical. Of particular note is the similar fading of the brown ink and capitals touched with yellow. Further similarities include the shape of the hairline tendrils and gold disks, the burnishing of the gold, and the range of colors. Thanks to Federica Toniolo, we now know that the same saints appear in the roughly contemporary and related Missal of Borso d’Este by the same group of artists (Modena, Biblioteca estense universitaria, MS lat. 239).

The Llangattock Breviary originally comprised more than five hundred leaves and was created as a luxurious liturgical manuscript for Lionello d’Este (1407-1450), Marchese of Ferrara. Lionello was a wealthy patron of the arts, tied to such artists as Guarino da Verona, Leon Battista Alberti, Giovanni Bellini, Andrea Mantegna, and Pisanello. Archival records demonstrate its commission by Lionello from the artist Giorgio d’Alemagna and his assistants. Begun in 1441 and finished in 1448, it was copied by the scribe Francesco de Codigoro, with Giorgio d’Alemagna as its principal illuminator. In 1443, the enormity of the project resulted in the enlistment of Guglielmo Giraldi, Jacopo Magnanina, Matteo de’ Pasti and Bartolomeo Benincà as assistants to the illumination.

Provenance
(1) Kenneth W. Rendell, Massachussetts, published and illustrated in his Catalogue 148 (1979), no. 90. 

(2) Private collection, California, USA, MS 232.

Parent manuscript
The Llangattock Breviary was named after its nineteenth-century owner, John Etherington Wells Rolls (1807-1870), first Baron Llangattock, whose bookplate it carried, alongside inscriptions recording its acquisition after the Peninsular War in the early nineteenth century. The manuscript was sold as part of the library of his son John Allan Rolls (1870-1912), 2nd Baron Llangattock, at Christie’s, 8 December 1958, lot 190. It was then acquired by the Goodspeed Book Shop of Boston, who dismantled it and sold the leaves separately.
 
Sister leaves
The leaves of the Llangattock Breviary are now dispersed in public and private collections around the world. A virtual reunification has been proposed on the “Broken Books” website (brokenbooks.omeka.net), which records 115 leaves as of April 2024. The site is maintained by Debra Cashion, whose findings were first published in 2021. Some leaves are illuminated with historiated miniatures, in Paris (Musée du Louvre, Arts graphiques, RF 51871) and Cambridge, Mass. (Harvard University, Houghton Library, MS Typ 301). Further leaves are to be found, for instance, at U.C. Berkeley, the American Academy in Rome, Michigan State University, University of South Carolina, Dartmouth College, to cite but a few. None of these leaves come from the calendar, and the present lot is the only one to have resurfaced.

Sister leaves from the Llangattock Breviary are nos. 26 and 52 in this sale.

LITERATURE
On the parent manuscript, see Federica Toniolo, in Les Enluminures du Louvre, Moyen âge et Renaissance, ed. François Avril, Nicole Reynaud, and Dominique Cordellier, Paris, 2011, no. 45; and Debra Cashion in The Burke Collection of Italian Manuscripts Paintings, ed. Sandra Hindman and Federica Toniolo, London, 2021, no. 32, pp. 322-331.

We are grateful to Federica Toniolo for her help with cataloging this entry. Freeman’s | Hindman thank Senior Consultant Sandra Hindman and Elliott Adam for their assistance in preparing this sale.