Manuscript on parchment of Leonardo Bruni, De bello italico adversus gothos, in the Italian version by Ludovico Petroni made in 1456. Preceded by the letter of Leonardo Bruni to Giuliano Cardinal Cesarini (1398-1444).
Description:
Binding: 18th-19th centuries, Italy. "Alla rustica" with grey-green paper added over the spine and part of the boards. Edges yellow., Partial border in inner margin of white vine-stem ornament, f. 1r, on blue, green and pink ground with white and blue dots. In lower border terminals extending in ink hair spray with green, pink and blue flowers and gold balls frame central medallion with a crude outline drawing of a head in profile (later addition?). Two decorated initials, 4- to 3-line, gold on blue, pink and green grounds with white vine-stem ornament. On f. 1r initial joined to partial border. Heading on f. 1r in red., and Script: Written by a single scribe in fere-gothic script, above top line.
Subject (Geographic):
Rome--History
Subject (Topic):
Illumination of books and manuscripts, Medieval, Italian literature--15th century, Literature, Medieval--Translations, Manuscripts, Medieval--Connecticut--New Haven, and Medieval and Renaissance Manuscripts in Beinecke Library
Manuscript on paper of Domenico Cavalca OP (c. 1270-1342), Esposizione del Credo.
Description:
Binding: Nineteenth century. Quarter binding, brown paper over cardboard, the spine in brown leather with five raised bands, the second compartment gold-tooled with the title “CAVALCA / ESPOSIZIONE / DEL CREDO”. Marbled endpapers., Parchment stays in the center and at the outer side of the quires; the fold of many bifolios is repaired by means of strips of parchment. The top, outer and lower margins water-stained, the upper outer corners of the leaves defective. Many lower margins repaired by means of strips of paper., Script: Written in many different hands., and Unevenly spread decoration.
Subject (Name):
Cavalca, Domenico,--d. 1342 and Dominicans
Subject (Topic):
Creeds, Italian literature--15th century, Manuscripts, Medieval--Connecticut--New Haven, and Medieval and Renaissance Manuscripts in Beinecke Library
Manuscript on parchment of 1) Curtius Rufus, Historia Alexandri Magni, translated into Italian and supplemented with material from Plutarch by Pier Candido Decembrio. 2) Pier Candido Decembrio, Comparazione di Cesare e d'Alessandro Magno.
Description:
Binding: 15th-16th centuries, Italy. Sewn on four tawed skin, slit straps laid in channels on the outside of wooden boards and pegged. Gilt edges. Covered in brown goatskin with corner tongues, and blind-tooled with a ropework star inside painted (red) and blind-tooled circles inside a floral border, all with metallic annular dots. There are traces of four leaf-shaped fastenings, the catches on the lower board, the upper one cut in for fabric straps attached with star-headed nails. Rebacked twice., One illuminated intial, 6-line, gold against blue, green and pink ground with white vine-stem ornament, extending into inner margin to form a partial border; terminating at top and bottom in pen inkspray with buds in green and pink and gold balls with hair-line extensions. Plain initials, 3- to 2-line, in blue, mark text divisions; headings in pale red., Purchased from Lathrop C. Harper in 1949 by Thomas E. Marston., and Script: Written by a single scribe in a slightly rounded humanistic bookhand with many cursive elements, below top line.
Subject (Name):
Caesar, Julius, Decembrio, Pier Candido,--1399-1477, Plutarch, and Rufus, Curtius
Subject (Topic):
Illumination of books and manuscripts, Medieval, Italian literature--15th century, Literature, Medieval--Translations, Manuscripts, Medieval--Connecticut--New Haven, and Medieval and Renaissance Manuscripts in Beinecke Library
Manuscript on paper of a Miscellany of vernacular humanistic prose texts, including works by Giovanni Boccaccio, Petrarch, Francesco Filelfo, and Leonardo Bruni.
Description:
Binding: Fifteenth century, Italy. Vellum stays adhered inside the quires. Original sewing on four tawed skin, slit straps laid in channels on the outside of wooden boards and nailed. Edges yellow ochre. A green and natural color, beaded endband is sewn on five cores. The primary one laid in grooves on the outside of the boards. The spine is lined with tawed skin or vellum extending onto the edge of the boards between supports. Covered in tan leather blind-tooled with a potented cross in a central square with rope interlace panels above and below, and a border also filled with rope interlace. Spine: supports defined with double fillets and the panels diapered. Traces of five bosses on each board. Two ivy leaf fastenings, the catches on the lower board, the upper one cut in for green fabric straps attached with star-headed nails. Binding is heavily overoiled., Script: Written in neat humanistic cursive by a single scribe, below top line., Three-quarter border, f. 5r, white vine-stem ornament on blue, red and green ground with grey and yellow dots. In lower border, vine-stem turning into a floral border and brown penwork scrolls with pink, blue and green flowers and gold dots. Illuminated initial, 6-line, gold on blue, green and red ground with white vine-stem ornament joined to inner border. Headings in red. Plain 3-line initials in blue mark text divisions. Guide letters in margins., and Watermarks: Briquet Fleur 6655, Echelle 5908, 5910, and similar to Briquet Chapeau 3370.
Subject (Topic):
Humanism--Italy, Italian literature--15th century, Italian literature--To 1400, Manuscripts, Medieval--Connecticut--New Haven, and Medieval and Renaissance Manuscripts in Beinecke Library
Manuscript on paper of an unidentified mystical treatise.
Description:
Alternately red and blue paragraph marks. Headings in red. Gothic plain initials in red or blue, normally 3 lines, sometimes 2 or 4 lines. The first page, now missing except for part of a stub, had a border decoration in ink., Binding: Original binding in bad condition, made at the time the manuscript had more than twice the thickness it has now: undecorated brown pigskin over wooden boards. Bound on three double cords. The binding was strengthened by means of strips of textile, now loose. These and the leather turn-ins show the offset of a page of a 12th-century Latin manuscript from Italy. Remnants of two clasps attached to the front cover, with two trapezoid brass catches on the rear cover., Numerous pages have been torn out after f. 84. The top inner section of f. 1 is missing. All pages water-stained, seriously affecting the lisibility of the text., and Script: Copied by one hand in Humanistica Cursiva Libraria under Gothic influence. The scribe often writes the last letters of the final word at the bottom line in vertical sense. Starting f. 40r the descenders at the bottom line frequently have enormous fanciful extensions (loop-shaped, in the shape of a bird [ff. 54v, 65r], etc.).
Subject (Topic):
Italian literature--15th century, Manuscripts, Medieval--Connecticut--New Haven, Medieval and Renaissance Manuscripts in Beinecke Library, and Mysticism
Manuscript on paper of 1) Sonnet by the Franciscan Alessandro de Ritiis, or by his compatriot from L'Aquila, Buccio di Ranallo, lamenting the loss of a loaned book. 2) Polistorio, attributed to the Dominican Bartolomeo da Ferrara (1308-1444).
Description:
Binding: Fifteenth century, Italy. Parchment stays are adhered inside the quires. Rear pastedown (now lifted): parchment leaf from a lectionary, Italy (North?), 1050-1100; a parchment leaf, perhaps from the same manuscript, is concealed under front paper pastedown. Each leaf, with a stub, is folded around the front and back flyleaves, sewn, and glued down under the pastedowns. Original sewing on five tawed skin, slit straps laid in channels on the outside of beech boards and nailed. Yellow edges. Plain wound, natural color endbands are sewn on leather cores. Covered in brown calf with narrow corner tongues. There is a large, eight-petalled fitting in the central blind-tooled panel and four corner fittings have flower and agnus dei designs on them. The concentric outer frames are filled with rope interlace or small roses. The Marcello arms were stamped on each board on an inlaid leather shield which is wanting on the upper board. Spine: bands outlined with triple fillets, an X of three fillets in the panels. Four fastenings, the catches on the lower board, the upper one cut in for red fabric straps, attached with star-headed nails., Collection of Sir Thomas Phillipps (no. 3008). Purchased from H. P. Kraus in 1956 by Thomas E. Marston., Fully illuminated title page, f. 6r. Floral border in inner and upper margin, black inkspray with blossoms, green, blue and purple with white highlights and gold balls. Bar border between text columns, gold and red, extends from buds (mauve, green and blue with white highlights) with stylized foliage, purple, blue and green and gold with white highlights; surmounted in upper margin by half-length figure of Virgin with Child. In outer margin, elaborate partial border of stylized foliage and flowers, green, blue and purple with white and yellow highlights and gold balls, framing central wreathed medallion with triton blowing a curved horn, on gold ground with penwork filigree. In center of lower border, arms of the Marcello family of Venice (azure, a bend wavy or) on deep red ground within wreathed medallion, both with yellow highlights. Arms symmetrically flanked by 2 putti plucking fruit from wreathed medallion and holding rods, green, blue, and purple with scrolls bearing the mottoes "sola virtus" and "dulcia poma" in red, and two triton-putti, one playing a flute, the other a stringed musical instrument. One historiated initial, 6-line, of stylized foliage in green, purple, and blue with white filigree on gold ground, with a half-length figure of a crowned and bearded man, perhaps the Emperor Augustus. The design of the upper and inner border and of the historiated initial is conservative in style and close to the work of Leonardo Bellini., Script: Written in fere-humanistic script by a single scribe, above top line., and Watermarks: Briquet Arbalete 746.
Subject (Topic):
Illumination of books and manuscripts, Medieval, Italian literature--15th century, Manuscripts, Medieval--Connecticut--New Haven, and Medieval and Renaissance Manuscripts in Beinecke Library
Friendship--Early works to 1800, Italian literature--15th century, Manuscripts, Medieval--Connecticut--New Haven, and Medieval and Renaissance Manuscripts in Beinecke Library
Manuscript on paper (thick, coarse) of Lives of the Saints, preceded by accounts of events in the Bible from both the Old and New Testaments. Folios 51 and 61 interchanged in rebinding.
Description:
Binding: Nineteenth century, Italy. Rigid vellum case with two red labels on spine: "Trattati di storia sacra" and "Manuscritto 1360"., Crudely executed title page, f. 1r, consisting of floral and foliage motifs in upper margin, scroll around column in inner margin, and, in outer margin, scroll around column terminating in elongated arm with text on the scroll (much rubbed and stained). In lower margin a coat of arms (damaged; probably: or, two columns gules); the letters B and C on either side in the bases of columns in inner and outer margins. The decoration of title page in bright red and green. Plain initials (some with simple foliage designs), headings, paragraph marks, pointing hands, and hands holding crosses or symbols of passions of martyrs (e. g., gridiron for Laurence), all in bright red, green, and/or black., Folio 1 damaged; no loss of text., Script: Written by several scribes in unruly mercantesca script, above top line. Script becomes smaller and tighter toward end of codex., and Watermarks: similar in design to Briquet Ciseaux 3708 dated Genoa, 1465.
Subject (Topic):
Christian hagiography, Illumination of books and manuscripts, Medieval, Italian literature--15th century, Manuscripts, Medieval--Connecticut--New Haven, and Medieval and Renaissance Manuscripts in Beinecke Library
Manuscript on paper of Jacopo Salimbeni's Viaggio de quatro chavalieri andarono cercando il mondo, an account of travel to the East.
Description:
Contemporary foliation employed: ff. 61-84. Also has modern foliation in pencil at bottom right., Disbound., Manuscript on paper of Jacopo Salimbeni's Viaggio de quatro chavalieri andarono cercando il mondo, an account of travel to the East undertaken 1416 May 1, starting from Venice. The language of this manuscript is influenced by the Venetian dialect. The first sixty folios are missing., and Script: copied by one hand in Gothica Semihybrida Currens (Mercantesca).
Subject (Name):
Salimbeni, Jacopo,--d. ca. 1427
Subject (Topic):
Italian literature--15th century, Manuscripts, Medieval--Connecticut--New Haven, Medieval and Renaissance Manuscripts in Beinecke Library, and Voyages around the world