Tobias and the Angel Raphael - Oxford Bible Leaf c.1230-50

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Original leaf from an English manuscript pocket Bible. Written in Latin in minute gothic book-hand script, in brown ink on animal vellum. (214x147 mm – 8 3/8 x 5 7/8’’) Rubricated chapter numbers, initials and marginalia in red and blue. 49 lines of text in double columns (9 lines per inch!).

Oxford, England, c. 1230-50.

Produced by an artist working within the circle of William de Brailes - one of the few 13th -century English illuminators known by name(De Brailes maintained an active workshop at Oxford c. 1238-52.  He was the illuminator of the Oxford Bible).   

The historiated initial “T” opens the Book of Tobias 1:1-20 (KJ Tobit): “Tobias ex tribu…” (Tobias of the tribe and city of Nephtali…).The five-line historiated initial “T” is in pink with white tracery and extending into the margin in pink, white, gold and blue on a burnished gold ground. The interior contains a miniature painting of the angel Raphael healing Tobias’ blind father.  The angel Raphael helped a young Tobias catch a fish with curative properties. The miniature shows Raphael holding the jar of ointment made from the fish in his left arm while he applies the ointment to the father’s eyes with his right hand.

The four-line illuminated initial “E” is in pink & white on a blue and pink ground with a decorative interior in gold, green, pink and blue. One illuminated two-line initial in blue with delicate red pen-work extending into the margin.

The second line begins text from IV Esdras 1:32—2:48 (this book appears as an appendix to the Latin Vulgate Bible – also known as part of the Apocrypha).  

Provenance: From a Bible sold at Sotheby's London, 5 July 1976 and subsequently dispersed. Leaves were with dealer Edward R Lubin, NY in the 1980's (cf European Illuminated Manuscripts, nos. 6 and 7, illus.), and sister leaves were described by Dr S. Hindman and pictured in Ferrini Catalog One (1987), items 15 and 16.

Presented in an archival 14 x 11'' mat

  • Inventory# IM-3365
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