[ANTIPHONAL.]

Antiphonal, with neumes, containing music for the blessing of the Paschal Candle on Holy Saturday.

Southern Germany or Bohemia, mid-fifteenth century.

An unusual and striking antiphonal leaf written entirely in red and notated entirely in burnished gold, signalling the importance of the text for Holy Saturday.

£3500

BEDFORDSHIRE – ARLESEY.

Charter of William Hoye of Arlesey (‘Auricheseya’) granting to Robert of Wewenshal for seventy shillings...

Bedfordshire, 1st half of 13th century.

Witnessed by Roger Burnard, William Rixpaud, Roger his brother, Richard the clerk, Robert Rixpaud, Henry son of Odo, Walter son of William, Ivo of Stodfaud, Geoffrey his son, Simon of Estwich, Andrew of Qurisco, William son of Gerard, Roger son of Walter son of William Hay, and many others. Various place-names...

£1400

[BOOK OF HOURS.]

Parts of the Hours of the Cross, Litanies, and Office of the Dead.

Northern France (?Loire Valley), late fifteenth century.

Four leaves from a small and elegant Book of Hours, with attractive initials and borders and with spaces left blank for small miniatures.

£1250

[CHOIRBOOK.]

Large historiated initial ‘I’.

Italy (Umbria), c. 1300.

A very elegant initial in a style characteristic of Umbrian illumination of the late thirteenth and early fourteenth centuries. It can be compared to the oeuvres of the First Master of the Gubbio Choir Books and the Master of the Deruta-Salerno Missals, the latter named after two Missals made for the...

£4500

DECIO, Filippo.

Philippi Decii Mediolanens. I. C. clarissimi commentaria in digesti vete. et cod. aliquot titulos, additionibus...

Lyon, Jean Liébault, 1567.

Scarce posthumous edition of an exhaustive commentary on parts of the Digest and Code of Justinian I by the distinguished Italian jurist, political theorist, and teacher Filippo Decio (1454–1535).

£1750

DE ROSSI, Bastiano.

Lettera di Bastiano de’ Rossi cognominato lo Inferigno, Accademico della Crusca. A Flamminio Mannelli, nobil...

Florence, Accademici della Crusca, 1585.

Scarce first edition of this defence of Florence and its citizens against the alleged slights of Torquato Tasso.

£1750

FISHER, John.

Assertionum Martini Lutheri confutatio, per reverendum patrem D. Iohannem Roffensem ep[iscop]um, Cantabrigien[sis]...

Cologne, Eucharius Cervicornus for Gottfried Hittorp, January 1525.

Later edition (first 1523) of this highly influential attack on Martin Luther by John Fisher (c. 1469–1535), bishop of Rochester, chancellor of Cambridge University, and Catholic martyr; this copy with pastedowns preserving fragments of a twelfth-century Italian lectionary.

£3000

GALLARATI, Paolo.

Pauli Gallerati I.U.D., et ex Novarien. Collegio Iuris Consulti celeberrimi, de renuntiationibus tractatus tribus...

Milan, Giovanni Giacomo Como, 1623.

The first two volumes of the expanded second edition (first Novara 1616) of Paolo Gallarati’s famous and much reprinted work on all aspects of the law surrounding renunciation, bound preserving fragments from a twelfth-century Italian Breviary and a thirteenth-century Italian Bible.

£2000

[GRADUAL.]

Vast historiated initial ‘A’ cut from a Gradual.

Italy (Umbria), end of thirteenth century.

A spectacular initial on the scale of a small panel painting. The verso includes the text ‘[neque] irrideant me inimici mei […] [un]iversi qui te expectant’ and the versicle ‘Vias tuas domine de[monstras]’, indicating that the initial would have introduced the introit ‘Ad te levavi animam...

£20000

[GRADUAL.]

Bifolium containing chants for Easter Monday and Easter Friday.

Northeast Spain, 11th century.

A remarkable bifolium containing chants for Easter Monday and Easter Friday, with two forceful initials, and distinctive ‘Catalan’ neumes. Spanish manuscripts of this early date are a rarity.

£5000

ITALY – PIEVE DI SAN MINIATO DI RUBBIANA.

Petition to Pope Clement VII, in Latin, on paper, 30 lines in a small Italian notarial...

The petition explains that the parish of San Miniato in the Valle Rubbiana, in the diocese of Fiesole and in the lay patronage of the Buondelmonti family of Florence, is vacant following the death of the organist Mariotto di Michele Giovanni. The patrons, or the majority of them, or their duly appointed...

£250

[LANDO, Ortensio; Paulo MASCRANICO, editor.]

Paradossi cioe, sententie fuori del comun parere, novellamente venute in luce. Opra...

Venice, [s.n.], 1544.

Attractive Venetian edition of Ortensio Lando’s Paradossi, with a binding preserving two leaves from a once fine English Processional.

£1500

LANDSBERG, Johannes Justus.

Iohannis Iusti Lanspergii Bavari Carthusiani omnium epistolarum ac evangeliorum dominicalium totius...

Cologne, Melchior von Neuss, 1548.

Later edition (first 1539) of paraphrases, exegeses, and sermons by the Carthusian ascetic and mystic Johannes Landsberg (c. 1490–1539).

£950

[LECTIONARY.]

Four leaves from a twelfth-century lectionary.

Northeast Spain?, 2^nd half of the 12^th century.

Four leaves from a large and handsome twelfth-century lectionary with readings from the lives of St Nicholas, St Ambrose, St Leocadia of Toledo, St Eulalia of Mérida, and St Paul of Narbonne, whose feasts fall between the 6^th and the 11^th of December.

£4500

MASTER B.F.

Three very large historiated initials cut from a set of choirbooks.

Italy (Lodi), early sixteenth century.

Three extremely fine initials by the enigmatic artist known as Master B.F., one of the most inventive and accomplished illuminators of the Italian High Renaissance. They come almost certainly from a magnificent set of about twenty choirbooks belonging to the Olivetan monastery of Santi Angelo e Niccolò...

£150000

[MASTER OF THE GENEVA BOCCACCIO.]

St Bartholomew in India, miniature cut from a copy of Vincent of Beauvais, Speculum historiale.

[France (Loire Valley, Nantes or Angers), fifteenth century (c. 1460s).]

An iconographically intriguing miniature by one of the greatest painters in the circle of Jean Fouquet, from a deluxe copy of Vincent of Beauvais’s Speculum historiale almost certainly commissioned by King René of Anjou.

£12500

NEGRI, Stefano.

Stephani Nigri quae quidem praestare sui nominis ac studiosis utilia noverimus monimenta, nempe translationes:...

Basel, Heinrich Petri, August 1532.

Handsome Petri edition of the collected works of Stefano Negri (1475–1540), Milanese professor of Greek, first published at Milan in 1521.

£1750

PASSI, Carlo.

La selva di varia istoria … la quale avanti andava attorno stampata sotto nome finto di Annotationi dell’Infortunio,...

Venice, Altobello Salicato, 1572.

An unsophisticated copy of Passi and Ruscelli’s elaborations and explanations of Paolo Giovio’s history of his own time, bound in contemporary limp vellum reusing manuscript waste.

£500

SPENCER, Eleanor P. 

The Sobieski Hours: A Manuscript in the Royal Library at Windsor Castle. 

London, [Rampant Lion Press for] Academic Press, 1977. 

Limited edition, dedicated and presented to the Roxburghe Club by Robin Mackworth-Young, a member’s copy presented to Adrian McLaughlin. 

£475

[SPINELLI.]

Illuminated arms of the Spinelli family of Florence.

Italy (Florence), c. 1460s.

Florentine border decoration of very high quality from what must have been a luxurious manuscript produced for a member of the wealthy Spinelli family. Sadly there is no indication of the contents of the parent manuscript, nor have we been able to identify a likely candidate, but ruling just visible...

£2750