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Detailed record for Harley 3109
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| Author |
Jerome |
| Title |
Epistulae |
| Origin |
Italy, Central (Rome) |
| Date |
3rd quarter of the 15th century |
| Language |
Latin |
| Script |
Humanistic |
| Artists |
Andrea da Firenze? |
| Decoration |
Historiated white vine initial in colours and gold with Jerome writing combined with a three-sided white vine border inhabited by birds (f. 1). Numerous initials in gold on a pink, green and/or blue panel. |
| Dimensions in mm |
330 x 230 (210 x 130) |
| Official foliation |
ff. i-iii + 320 (+ 1 unfoliated paper flyleaf after f. ii + 1 unfoliated parchment flyleaf after f. iii + 2 unfoliated parchment flyleaves and 2 paper flyleaves at the end) |
| Collation |
Mainly in quires of 10. |
| Form |
Parchment codex |
| Binding |
Post-1600. 'Harleian' binding of gold-tooled red leather (replaced onto modern binding); marbled endpapers; gilt edges. |
| Provenance |
This manuscript was made in Rome in the 3rd quarter of the 15th century, and its borders were decorated by the same hand (Andrea da Firenze?) as Harley 2768, according to unpublished notes of A. C. de la Mare at the Bodleian Library, Oxford.
Ludovicus Petronius , humanist, of Siena, senator of Rome from 1451: his arms (f. 1).
John Gibson (fl. 1720-1726), dealer: sold to Edward Harley on 13 February 1723/4 (Diary 1966; Wright 1972).
The Harley Collection, formed by Robert Harley (b. 1661, d. 1724), 1st earl of Oxford and Mortimer, politician, and Edward Harley (b. 1689, d. 1741), 2nd earl of Oxford and Mortimer, book collector and patron of the arts, inscribed as usual by their librarian, Humfrey Wanley ‘13 die Februarij, A.D. 1723/4X’ (f. iii).
Edward Harley bequeathed the library to his widow, Henrietta, née Cavendish Holles (b. 1694, d. 1755) during her lifetime and thereafter to their daughter, Margaret Cavendish Bentinck (b. 1715, d. 1785), duchess of Portland; the manuscripts were sold by the Countess and the Duchess in 1753 to the nation for £10,000 (a fraction of their contemporary value) under the Act of Parliament that also established the British Museum; the Harley manuscripts form one of the foundation collections of the British Library. |
| Notes |
ff. i and ii are paper flyleaves, ff. iii and [322] are former parchment pastedowns.
Catchwords. Some guide rubrics written vertically at the edge of the folio have not been cropped (e. g. ff. 228, 228v, etc.). Leaf signatures.
No annotations. |
| Select bibliography |
A Catalogue of the Harleian Manuscripts in the British Museum, 4 vols (London: Eyre and Strahan, 1808-12), III (1808), no. 3109.
The Diary of Humfrey Wanley 1715-1726, ed. by Cyril Ernest Wright and Ruth C. Wright, 2 vols (London: Bibliographical Society, 1966), II: 1723-1726, p. 272 n. 12.
Cyril Ernest Wright, Fontes Harleiani: A Study of the Sources of the Harleian Collection of Manuscripts in the British Museum (London: British Museum, 1972), pp. 162, 274-75.
Cyril Ernest Wright, 'Manuscripts of Italian Provenance in the Harleian Collection in the British Museum: Their Sources, Associations and Channels of Acquisition', in Cultural Aspects of the Italian Renaissance. Essays in Honour of Paul Oskar Kristeller, ed. by C. H. Clough (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1976), pp. 462-84 (p. 465). |
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