[Illuminated Manuscript Leaf on Vellum]. Single leaf from the Llangattock Breviary. [Ferrara: ca. 1441-1448]....

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Single Leaf from the Llangattock Breviary

[Illuminated Manuscript Leaf on Vellum]. Single leaf from the Llangattock Breviary. [Ferrara: ca. 1441-1448].

Quarto (10. 75 x 7.9375 inches; 273 x 200 mm.). Written in dark brown and red ink in a rounded Italian gothic hand. Double columns, thirty lines, ruled in lead (justification: 6. 5 x 5 inches; 165 x 127 mm.). Four full-length illuminated bar borders of highly burnished gold and blue or pink with central plant knots and elaborate terminal and/or marginal sprays of foliage and flowers in blue, brown, green, orange, pink, and red and burnished gold bezants on scrolling penwork stems and tendrils. Ten two-line initials in highly burnished gold on alternating blue and pink grounds, with white tracery and outlined in brown ink. Two one-line initials in blue with red penwork. Capitals stroked yellow. Two tiny (stitching?) holes at the left edge. Some light rubbing to the text only on both the recto and verso. Some very slight natural discoloration to the vellum and darkening at the edges.

This exquisite leaf is from the Llangattock Breviary, which was brought to Wales in the early nineteenth century by the Rolls family, later the Barons Llangattock, The Hendre, Monmouth, and sold in their sale, Christie's, 8 December 1958, Lot 190. The manuscript was purchased by Goodspeed's of Boston and dismantled in 1959. The largest portion (the first gathering of ten leaves) was purchased by Philip Hofer and later given to Harvard (Houghton Library, MS. Typ. 301; see Roger Wieck, Late Medieval and Renaissance Illuminated Manuscripts (1983), p. 130 and fig. 74).

The manuscript is now known to be the Breviary of Leonello d'Este, Duke of Ferrara 1441-1450, recorded in the Este accounts as having been illuminated between 1441 and 1448 by Giorgio d'Alemagna, Bartolomeo Beninca, Guglielmo Giraldi, Jacopo Magnanino, and Matteo de' Pasti.