Two leaves from a portable Antiphonal [Iberian peninsula (probably Spain, second half 12th Century]

Two leaves from a portable Antiphonal [Iberian peninsula (probably Spain), second half 12th Century]

one with the Annunciation to the Virgin in a large historiated initial, in Latin, illustrated manuscript on vellum

Two single leaves, each recovered from reuse on the binding of an account book, with a near-half-page initial ‘D’ (opening Psalm 39: “Dixi custodiam uias ...”) in bands of penwork and penels coloured with yellow wash, enclosing a penwork winged angel who appears to the Virgin holding a banderole with “Ave Marie” on it, both with rosy red-dotted cheeks and in pale green robes, all on red and dark blue grounds, the terminals of the initial twisting into penwork foliage sprays in the border, initials in red or dark blue with foliate coloured infill, some capitals infilled with yellow wash, others infilled in red, red rubrics, text in single column of 20 lines of a fine Iberian Romanesque hand, with music in neumes arranged around a clef-line, one leaf with an added line at head most probably of the seventeenth century (this much faded), each leaf 320 by 216mm.; with another leaf from a fourteenth-century Italian Missal, also recovered from reuse on a binding and much torn at edges

Footnote:

Examples of Spanish book arts of this great age are rare to the market. For comparable leaves see P. Kidd, The McCarthy Collection, Volume II: Spanish, English, Flemish and Central European Miniatures, 2019, nos. 1-3.

We would like to thank Dr. Timothy Bolton for assistance with the cataloguing of this lot.

Condition Report:

Recovered from reuse on the binding of an account book, and hence with some scrawled inscriptions, staining, scuffing, a few small holes (one in the middle of the historiated initial at the angel’s hip) and once folded, overall fair condition.