Original leaf from a medieval manuscript Bible. Written in formal gothic textura minuscule in two columns of forty-six lines per page on animal vellum. (293 x 200mm – 11 ½ x 7 7/8’’)
Paris, c. 1320-40.
From a Bible once owned by St. Albans - England’s greatest Royal Abbey in the Middle Ages!
Two two-line illuminated initials alternating in purple and pink with floral interior on a burnished gold ground; five calligraphic initials with wonderful doodles (Recto: “Porro” column 1, line 1, a face, very light, facing right; column 2, line 1, “Responditque” face, very faint, facing left and head of a young man wearing a hat; Verso: column 1, line 1, “Egrederetur” with some sort of creature; column 2, line 1 “Da eis” with a wonderful dog wearing a robe). Full-length illuminated marginal stems with tendrils and leaves painted in burnished gold, white, blue, pink & red.
The calligraphic “P” begins IV Kings (King James II Kings)4:30 – 6:9 (Miracles of Eliseus): “Porro mater…” (But the mother of the child said: As the lord liveth, and as thy soul liveth, I will not leave thee…He said again: Give to the people, that they may eat: for thus saith the Lord: They shall eat, and there shall be left…I thought he would have come out to me, and standing would have invoked the name of the Lord his God, and touched with this hand the place of the leprosy, and healed me …I know there is no other God in all the earth, but only in Israel…).
Presented in an archival 16 x 12 mat.
