Ferial Psalter and Breviary (use of the Roman curia).

approximately 1480

Fols. 1r-6v: double-graded kalendar full of saints, largely of Italian focus, many of which are centered on Brescia and even identify the city by name -- Fols. 7r-8r: Variant seasional Invitatories -- Fols. 8r-86v: Ferial Psalter, rubricated and with special instructions for the seasons -- Fols. 87r-254r: Temporale section of the Breviary, Use of the Roman Curia, including a Litany of the Saints on fols. 163r-163v -- Fols. 254r-360v. Sanctorale portion of the Breviary, use of the Roman Curia -- Fols. 360v-376r: Commune Sanctorum section of the Breviary, Use of the Roman Curia (Fol. 376v is blank, but has an erased inscription recording the date 1561) -- Fols. 377r-404v: Offices of the Holy Trinity, the Dead, Eternal Wisdom, the Blessed Virgin, special instruction for the Office of the Blessed Virgin, an ordo for catechumens, with a litany on fols. 402v-403r (an erased inscription on 404v records with world 'Milano' in the same hand as that on 376v). This section apparently added, for it is in a slightly different script and boasts a different decorative scheme.

Collation: I⁶ + II¹⁰ - XLI¹⁰ + XLII⁷.

Double column, 30 lines. Written in diminutive, elegant Gothic bookhand, with occasional cadels on the penwork (one enclosing a smiling human face on fol. 82v). Catchwords throughout, some decorative. Written on parchment.
Decoration: Twelve decorative nine-line initials in red with constrasting penwork, infilled with floral designs, and marginal penwork extensions terminating in fleshy flowers. These initials introduce Psalms 1 (fol. 8r), 26 (fol. 18r), 38 (fol. 26r), 52 (fol. 32r), 68 (fol. 37v), 80 (fol. 46r), 97 (fol. 52r), 109 (fol 70r), a standard liturgical division of the Psalms, and four more at major sections in the Breviary (87r, 113r, 254r, 360v). Two five line decorative initials entirely in red at 133v and 307v. Four four-or three-line initials in red or blue with red penwork and blue, red, or black dots (fols. 60v, 66v, 75r, 137v); hundreds of one-, two- and three-line initials in red and blue with red penwork. Rubricated throughout. Some spaces occasionally left for initials.

Binding: Nineteenth-century parchment over pasteboards with marbled endpapers.

Provenance: Written and decorated approximately 1480, most probably in Brescia, since the principal saints of that city appear in red in the kalendar: SS. Apollonius (7 July) and Philastrius, fourth-century bishop of the city (18 July). Furthermore, there are near-contemporary additions to the kalendar of other Brescian saint-bishops, such as the first-century Anatolius, the fourth-century Ursinus and Faustinus, the sixth-century Titianus, and so on, few of whom were actually canonized in any official sense. This portable manuscript first surfaced in 1979, in the collection of Frits Fasting, Rio de Janiero, and it has Fasting's twentieth-century ink stamp on the front pastedown, ex libris no. 4855. Sold at Sotheby's, 11 December 1979, lot 57; Christie's, 17 July 1985, lot 300; Sotheby's, 2 July 2013, L13240, lot 40. Purchased from King Alfred's Notebook [bookseller], Cayce, South Carolina, March 2015.

BX2033 .A2 1480

Brescia?, Lombardy, Italy.