Beschreibung:

Leaf from the St Albans Abbey Bible, in Latin, illuminated manuscript on parchment [northern France (Paris), c. 1330] Single leaf, with double columns of 46 lines in a fine gothic bookhand (Numbers 28:3-30:9), with ornamental cadels in topmost line ornamented with hairline penwork picking out foliage and an animal's mask, capitals touched in yellow wash, versal numbers in alternate liquid gold and blue capitals with contrasting penwork, running titles in same, two 2-line initials (one each side of leaf) each in faded pink, heightened with white penwork, enclosing coloured foliage and on burnished gold grounds, extensions into margin forming a text border filling entire central gutter of thin coloured and gold panels, these panels terminating at head and foot in horizontal sprays of foliage to the left and right ending in coloured and gold leaves, small spots and slight offset from decoration of adjacent leaves in original volume, else in good condition, 295 by 200mm. Provenance: 1. From an incomplete Bible sold at Sotheby's, 6 July 1964, lot 239, to the dealer and book-breaker Philip C. Duschnes, who dispersed it. Other leaves had already been removed, with some ending up in the collections of E.H. Dring (1864-1928, one reappearing in Quaritch, cat. 1036, 1984, no. 76). Then identified in 1981 as from the medieval library of St Albans Abbey, Hertfordshire, and perhaps to be identified as one of 'duas bonas biblias' acquired by Abbot Michael de Mentmore (C. de Hamel in Fine Books and Book Collecting, 1981, pp. 10-12). 2. This leaf acquired from North American trade in 2019.