Beschreibung:

Histoire Ancienne , in French, ILLUMINATED MANUSCRIPT ON VELLUM [perhaps Brittany], 1474 345 x 250mm. 376 leaves: 1-47 8, COMPLETE, catchwords along the inner ruled vertical in the lower margin of final versos, modern pencilled foliation missing a folio between 136 and 137 and skipping from 151 to 153, and from 365-367, two columns of 41 lines in brown ink in a cursive bookhand between four verticals and 42 horizontals ruled in pink, justification: 250 x 168mm, rubrics in red, text capitals touched yellow, paragraph marks and line-endings in red or blue, two-line initials alternately of blue or red, guide letters often remaining, THIRTY-THREE HISTORIATED INITIALS with single burnished gold bars and partial borders of hairline tendrils with terminals of leaves and disks in burnished gold and painted leaves and flowers between larger sprays of painted fruit and flowers, the initials of 4-9 lines in height with staves usually of gold on grounds of pink and blue patterned with white, THIRTY-FOUR SMALL MINIATURES framed in liquid gold or pink-red with single burnished gold bars and partial borders, mostly placed outside the text block in the lower margins, ONE LARGE ARCH-TOPPED MINIATURE IN SIX COMPARTMENTS divided and framed in burnished gold with FULL-PAGE ARMORIAL BORDER and historiated initial (opening folios, including large miniature rubbed, slight flaking in a few miniatures, lower corners missing ff.2-5). 18th-century brown calf gilt. PROVENANCE: 1. Tanneguy du Chastel (d.1477) and his wife Jeanne Ragusnel de Malestroit: on f.1 his arms are in the centre of the border and hers in a lozenge to the right; their initials are intertwined in the side border. The Breton noble, Tanneguy du Chastel, was grand écuyer to both Charles VII and Louis XI. He accumulated a significant library, both by commissioning books, as here, and by exploiting the possibilities offered by royal favour: in 1476 he received many of the books confiscated from Jacques d'Armagnac, duc de Nemours. 2. Library of the château of Anet: seventh manuscript listed in the catalogue drawn up after the death of Anne de Bavière, princesse de Condé as 'orné de miniatures très singulières', Catalogue des manuscrits trouvez après le décès de Madame la Princesse, dans son Château Royal d'Anet , 1723. 3. French label Histoires de la Creation du Monde. M.S. Francais sur velin on spine. 4. William Bragge (1823-1884): his sale, Wellington St, London, 7 June 1876. In Paris since 1872, Bragge returned to Birmingham in 1876 when his French business venture failed (see lot 89). 5. Jonathan Peckover (1835-1882): his armorial bookplate. Jonathan, who died unmarried, was the second son of Algernon Peckover of Wisbech (1803-1893). 6. The Hon. Alexandrina Peckover (1860-1948): pencilled note 'left by her uncle Jonathan Peckover who died Feb 8th 1882'. Alexandrina was the second daughter of Jonathan's elder brother, the noted book collector Alexander, created Lord Peckover of Wisbech in 1907, whose title died with him in 1919. Other manuscripts from Alexandrina's collection were sold by her executors at Sotheby's, 4 April 1949. 7. Alexander Peckover Doyle Penrose (b.1896): armorial bookplate. He was the son of Alexandrina's elder sister Elizabeth and James Doyle Penrose of Watford; Lot 20 in the Peckover Sale, Sotheby's, 3 December 1951. CONTENT: The Histoire ancienne begins with the Creation and retells Genesis, in Book I, before incorporating Biblical history into narratives of the empires of Babylon, Ninevah, Thebes, Troy, Macedon and Rome, drawn from a variety of sources, in Books II-XI. Its anonymous author, writing in French for the châtelain of Lille between 1208-1213, directly pointed the moral lessons to be drawn from the past by introducing, and then interspersing, his prose narrative with didactic poems. He intended to proceed to the Christian Emperors and bring his history up to the present day but his task was never completed. The history of Rome ends abruptly