The Free Library of Philadelphia – Bibliotheca Philadelphiensis

Louis + Anne Forever

March 20, 2020December 10, 2020 by Nicholas Herman

Fifty-two discoveries from the BiblioPhilly project, No. 52/52

Illuminated Initial and Partial Border with Emblems of Anne of Brittany and Louis XII, Free Library of Philadelphia, Lewis T 659, front

We began this blog series with a post on a previously unknown prophetic treatise on the year 1512, personally written by Jean Lemaire de Belges for the great patroness and Queen of France, Anne of Brittany. Suitably, we will end the series with another, perhaps less spectacular but nonetheless interesting discovery related to this superlative promoter of the arts and inveterate bibliophile. The above item, previously unclassified and among the Free Library of Philadelphia’s circa 2,300 manuscript fragments hailing from the John Frederick Lewis Collection, could be mistaken at first glance for the upper-left-hand-corner cutting from any French manuscript leaf produced around the year 1500. Looking more closely, however, we find the initials L and A, the former embellished with a crown. In the triangular interstices formed by the zig-zag border motif, we additionally find a diapered pattern of fleurs-de-lys and ermine tails. These are distinctive symbols, ones that allow us to identify the fragment in question as a remnant of a great Gradual (the book of chants, often very large, containing musical settings for the Mass) produced for the Anne of Brittany and Louis XII of France around 1498.

Staring at the (Sistine) Ceiling

March 13, 2020December 10, 2020 by Nicholas Herman

Fifty-two discoveries from the BiblioPhilly project, No. 51/52

Attavante degli Attavanti, Historiated initial T from a Missal showing the Lamentation, Philadelphia, Free Library of Philadelphia, Lewis E M 25:9, front (recto)

To-date, in the Fifty-Two Discoveries from the Bibliotheca Philadelphiensis blog posts, we have been dealing with more-or-less complete manuscripts books (also known as codices), held in a variety of repositories around Philadelphia. But the city is also home to one of the largest holdings of Medieval and Renaissance manuscript fragments—by which I mean either: a) entire detached leaves; b) scraps used as binding reinforcement; or c) smaller excised portions of pages known as “cuttings”—in the world. Namely, the John Frederick Lewis collection at the Free Library of Philadelphia, which numbers around 2,300 such items.¹ Recently, the BiblioPhilly project interface has been updated to include this enormous collection, which had been digitized previously. Today’s post deals with one of the items from this collection, and a potentially exciting discovery related to it.

From Treviso to TEI: Sister Manuscripts from Montello?

March 6, 2020September 18, 2021 by Nicholas Herman

Fifty-two discoveries from the BiblioPhilly project, No. 50/52

Ambrose of Milan, Hexameron, Philadelphia, Free Library of Philadelphia, Lewis E 4, fol. 1r; Moral and didactic writings, Bethlehem, Lehigh University, Linderman Library, Lehigh Codex 4, fol. 55v

While sleuthing around in the BiblioPhilly interface, I became intrigued by two manuscripts, now at the Free Library of Philadelphia and Lehigh University, respectively, that seemed to share the same early provenance. Though quite different in nature, both manuscripts had catalogue information situating them in the library of the former Carthusian monastery of San Girolamo at Montello, outside of the historic city of Treviso about twenty kilometers north of Venice. This monastery was closed, sold off, and demolished in the wake of the Napoleonic invasions of the early nineteenth century, so it would not be altogether surprising to find remnants of its library scattered across North America. As we’ll see, however, only one of the volumes now united virtually through our regional digitization initiative can be pinpointed within a pre-dissolution inventory of the monastery’s library, a precious document likewise made available to us through the wonders of digitization.

Italian with a French Accent (Part II): Attributing the Illuminations of Lewis E 207

January 10, 2020December 10, 2020 by Nicholas Herman

Fifty-two discoveries from the BiblioPhilly project, No. 42/52

Prayer Book, Philadelphia, Free Library of Philadelphia, Lewis E 207, fol. 1r (miniature of the Presentation in the Temple); Gian Giacomo Trivulzio in Prayer before Saint Jerome, Trivulzio Hours, Madrid, Biblioteca Lazaro Galdiano, inv. 15454, fol. 16v (miniature of Gian Giacomo Trivulzio in Prayer before Saint Jerome)

Back in October, I posted about the Free Library of Philadelphia’s Lewis E 207, an unusual northern Italian prayer book that is prefaced by four abbreviated prayers from the Hours of the Virgin, each illustrated by a miniature executed in a naive but charming style and surrounded by illusionistic flower stems that seem to be threaded through the page. In conducting further research on this item for the Making the Renaissance Manuscript: Discoveries from Philadelphia Libraries exhibition, I contacted Professor Pier Luigi Mulas of the University of Pavia, an expert in Lombard illumination of the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, who very helpfully suggested some interesting stylistic comparisons and the potential identity of the artist responsible for the images and the borders.

Overlooked Texts, Overlooked Images (Part II): Mystery Engravings

January 3, 2020December 10, 2020 by Brooks Rich

Fifty-two discoveries from the BiblioPhilly project, No. 41/52
A guest post by National Gallery of Art Associate Curator of Old Master Prints, Brooks Rich

Album of Engravings and Devotional Texts by Erasmus, Marco Girolamo Vida, and Prudentius, Philadelphia, Free Library of Philadelphia, Lewis E 179, fol. 11r, Annunciation (detail); Albrecht Dürer, Annunciation from The Small Woodcut Passion, probably ca. 1509/1510, Washington, DC, National Gallery of Art, Rosenwald Collection, 1943.3.3635

The first part of this blog post examined the interesting selection of texts, previously unidentified, that were included in the Free Library of Philadelphia’s Lewis E 207 prayer book. Today, our subject is the series of engravings found within that same book. From the very beginning of their production in the late fourteenth century, single-leaf prints were pasted into prayer books and other private volumes and sometimes even further painted and gilded as inexpensive substitutes for illuminated miniatures.¹

Overlooked Texts, Overlooked Images (Part I): An Erasmian Album

December 27, 2019December 10, 2020 by Nicholas Herman

Fifty-two discoveries from the BiblioPhilly project, No. 40/52

Album of Engravings and Devotional Texts by Erasmus, Marco Girolamo Vida, and Prudentius, Philadelphia, Free Library of Philadelphia, Lewis E 179, fols. 46v–47r, Erasmus of Rotterdam, Prayer for Seious Illness; engraving, Christ breaking bread with the Apostles

Sixteenth-century books that combine manuscript text with engraved or woodcut images can sometimes fall through the cracks of scholarship. On account of their hybrid character, they are often neglected by manuscript specialists in favor of entirely hand-written books. At the same time, scholars of early printing, on the lookout for editions by recognizable publishers, tend to cast aside these complex combined works in the search for more easily classifiable items. However, over the past several decades these tendencies have started to change. Increasingly, scholars have taken on the complex interface of early printing and handwriting as a fascinating subject in and of itself.¹