The Philadelphia Museum of Art – Bibliotheca Philadelphiensis

Repainted Miniatures in the Frédéric Spitzer Hours

December 13, 2019June 15, 2020 by Nicholas Herman

Fifty-two discoveries from the BiblioPhilly project, No. 38/52

Book of Hours for the Use of Paris, Philadelphia, Philadelphia Museum of Art, 1945-65–5, p. 351 and 363 (detail of retouched miniature of Saint Michael; detail of unretouched miniature of Saints George and Lawrence)

The Austrian-born, Paris-based dealer-collector Baron Frédéric Spitzer (1815–1890) is well known to those who study medieval and Renaissance art on account of his famed collection of over 4,000 items, which was sold off after his death, and also on account of the numerous deceptive objects that passed through his hands at one point in time or another. In partnership with the restorer Reinhold Vasters, Spitzer orchestrated the production of misleading objects that he sold on the art market for enormous profit. These ran the gamut from outright forgeries, fakes, and pastiches to historicizing originals and honest replicas. A contemporary overview of his collection, before it became notorious for containing questionable objects, is provided here. Recently, Paola Cordera has written a monograph dealing with Spitzer’s wider role in the broader culture of the time, which also includes a list of the 3369 items in the 1893 auction, 508 items in the 1895 auction, and 686 items in the 1929 auction.¹

Family Resemblances, Part 1

September 13, 2019August 22, 2020 by Amey Hutchins

Fifty-two discoveries from the BiblioPhilly project, No. 25/52
A guest post by University of Pennsylvania Manuscripts Cataloging Librarian, Amey Hutchins

Carta executoria de hidalguia de Agustin de Yturbe, vezino de la ciudad de Sevilla, Bethlehem, PA, Lehigh University, Linderman Library, Codex 22, fols. 1v–2r (Full-page miniature, Yturbe family praying before the Virgin Mary; Full-page miniature, John the Baptist and Saint Augustine)

One of the great outcomes of the BiblioPhilly project is how easy it is to discover similar manuscripts in multiple partner libraries. As a cataloger at Penn, I was aware of seven cartas executorias in the Penn Libraries: six in the Kislak Center for Special Collections, Rare Books and Manuscripts, and one at the Library at the Katz Center for Advanced Judaic Studies. These are sixteenth- and early-seventeenth-century manuscripts celebrating the aristocratic genealogy of Spanish families and confirming the privileges of aristocracy, issued at the end of lawsuits brought in the chancillerías (royal chancery courts) in Granada or Valladolid to prove nobility. These privileges were worth having: they included exemption from taxes and protection from a variety of criminal punishments including torture and being sent to the galleys, and protection from imprisonment for debt.¹ Through the BiblioPhilly project, I have made the acquaintance of six more cartas executorias in the region: one at Lehigh University (not described as a carta executoria prior to the project), one at the Philadelphia Museum of Art, and four in the John Frederick Lewis Collection of European Manuscripts at the Free Library of Philadelphia.

Mapping (a) Manuscript(‘s) Migrations

September 6, 2019August 22, 2020 by Nicholas Herman

Fifty-two discoveries from the BiblioPhilly project, No. 24/52

Book of Hours for the Use of Rome, Philadelphia, Philadelphia Museum of Art, 1967–30–120, fol. 19r (miniature of Saint Mark and beginning of text from the Gospel Lesson for Saint Mark; detail of miniature)

Books created in the Middle Ages can certainly travel vast distances in subsequent centuries. Projects such as Mapping Manuscript Migrations, a collaboration between the Schoenberg Institute for Manuscript Studies at the University of Pennsylvania, the Oxford e-Research Centre, the Bodleian Libraries, the Institut de recherche et d’histoire des textes in Paris, and the Semantic Computing Group at Aalto University in Finland, will soon be able to harness the vast trove of later provenance information present in such repositories as the Schoenberg Database of Manuscripts, mostly garnered from sale catalogues, in order to tell us which manuscripts have moved the most since, say, 1750. But medieval books themselves frequently contain records of their perambulations that occurred long before the modern auction industry fed the appetites and shelves of collectors. A famous example is the so-called Morgan Crusader Bible (The Morgan Library & Museum, MS M.638), produced in Paris or Northern France shortly before 1250, modified in Naples in the fourteenth century, brought to Poland by Bernard Maciejowski, Bishop of Kraków, then given by him to Shah Abbas of Persia as a diplomatic gift in 1608, transferred to a Persian Jew in the eighteenth century, purchased by a Greek antiquities dealer in Cairo, sold in London in 1833, and purchased (except for three leaves) by Belle da Costa Greene for the Morgan Library in 1916.

A Mineralogist’s “Sword in the Stone”

August 2, 2019August 22, 2020 by Nicholas Herman

Fifty-two discoveries from the BiblioPhilly project, No. 19/52

Choirbook, Italy (Siena?), c. 1300, Philadelphia, Philadelphia Museum of Art, 1883.53, fol. 247r and Neroccio de’ Landi, Panel with Saints Christina of Bolsena(?), Catherine of Alexandria, Jerome, and Galganus, c. 1470, Phipadelphia, Philadelphia Museum of Art, John G. Johnson Collection, 1917, cat. 1169 (detail of Saint Galganus)

Though the Philadelphia Museum of Art’s collection of Medieval and Renaissance manuscripts is best known for the lavish codices received from the Philadelphia collectors Philip S. Collins and Mary Shell Collins in 1945, it possesses two items that came to the museum much closer to the year of its foundation, 1876. At the time, the institution was known as the Pennsylvania Museum and School of Industrial Art, before being renamed the Pennsylvania Museum of Art in 1929 (it would only acquire its current name a decade later). The first item is a Dutch Prayer Book received in 1882 (accession number 1882‑983), with no known prior provenance. The other book, received the following year, is a hefty but largely unadorned choirbook given to the museum by Clarence S. Bement, a Philadelphia philanthropist best known for his unparalleled collection of rare minerals (now mostly preserved at the Museum of Natural History in New York)!¹ At least four other books in the Bibliotheca Philadelphiensis project, including the famous Lewis Psalter, were once in Bement’s collection.

Vigilance and Prudence (and stickers): Books from the Brölemann Collection

July 12, 2019August 22, 2020 by Nicholas Herman

Fifty-two discoveries from the BiblioPhilly project, No. 16/52

Book of Hours for the Use of Rome (Hours of Étienne Thirion), Philadelphia, Philadelphia Museum of Art, 1945‑65‑14, inside front cover (with Arthur Brölemann bookplate) and Book of Hours for the Use of Rome (Victorines d’Auxy Hours), Philadelphia Philadelphia Museum of Art, 1945–65–15, inside front cover (with Arthur Brölemann bookplate)

The motley assortment of bookplates, pencil-written price-codes, ballpoint pen descriptions, and, yes, stickers (or rather adhesive labels) that frequently populate the endpapers of many Medieval manuscripts in North American collections may seem extrinsic to the content of a book’s original text and illustrations. Yet there is an elite subset of manuscript scholars specializing in research on the later provenance of medieval codices that has devoted particular attention to such details. Often, their research can help us reconstruct the trajectory of a book that is otherwise lacking in historic ownership information.

Introducing the Hours of Étienne Thirion, hyperopic Receiver General of Montréal

July 5, 2019August 22, 2020 by Nicholas Herman

Fifty-two discoveries from the BiblioPhilly project, No. 15/52

Book of Hours for the Use of Rome (here identified as the Hours of Étienne Thirion), Philadelphia, Philadelphia Museum of Art, 1945‑65‑14, fols. 25v–26r (end of the “Ave cuius conceptio” prayer and beginning of the Hours of the Virgin; owner kneeling in prayer before the Annunciation)

Last week, we examined the fascinating imprints left by eyeglasses in this Book of Hours from the collections of the Philadelphia Museum of Art (PMA 1945-65-14). Today, we’ll take a closer look at the identity of the book’s first owner, and the artist he commissioned to paint the book’s miniatures.