Missale, Use of Magdeburg. [Magdeburg: Moritz Brandis, 14 April 1497]....

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Illuminated and Colored by a Contemporary Hand

Missale, Use of Magdeburg. [Magdeburg: Moritz Brandis, 14 April 1497].

Large folio (15.5 x 10.5 inches; 393 x 266 mm.). [274] leaves. Printed in red and black, the red printed first. Double columns, thirty-eight lines. Large opening initial in blue on orange and gold ground with white modeling and floral extension, five-line opening canon initial in lavender on orange and gold ground within blue fictive frame, floral extensions, full-page woodcut of the Crucifixion on 2a3 verso, colored by hand in blue, green, orange, brown and ochre. Seven-line decorative woodcut initials printed in red, large paragraph marks printed in red, Lombard initials, all printed in red.

Early twentieth-century maroon crushed levant morocco by Lortic of Paris (stamp-signed in gilt on the front turn-in). Covers decoratively panelled in gilt and blind, with central gilt arms of the Duke of Villafranca on the front cover, gilt inner dentelles, marbled endpapers, all edges marbled and gilt. Lightly washed, affecting illumination, a few very neatly repaired tears in a few leaves. Provenance: Charles-Louis de Bourbon, Duke of Villafranca (1799-1883), with the armorial bookplate of his liturgical library on the front pastedown, with No. "91" in neat black ink; his son Robert de Bourbon, Duke of Parma (1848-1907).

A fine, complete copy, with contemporary illumination and hand-coloring, from the liturgical library of Charles Louis de Bourbon. Extremely rare. Housed in a quarter brown calf over linen board clamshell case, the spine lettered in gilt with six raised bands.

The first book printed at Magdeburg was the first edition (1480) of the Magdeburg Missal, printed by Bartholomaeus Ghotan, but with the assistance and types of Lucas Brandis. When Lucas's brother, Moritz, moved from Leipzig to Magdeburg, he brought out two, possibly for, editions of the Missal. All are very rare (one is known only in a proofsheet destroyed during World War II) and most are imperfect. No copy of any fifteenth-century edition has been sold at auction for over sixty years.

Alès 91. BMC II, page 599. Copinger 4160. Goff M-673 (one copy, at the Huntington). Meyer-Baer p.17. Schreiber 4724. Weale-Bohatta 573.