| Description | Italian Book of Hours, c1470-1480, beginning Officium Beatae Mariae Virginis (office of the Blessed Virgin Mary). Originally 106(?) leaves, with 19th-century additions: full page colour illustrations and decorated borders, including a Crucifixion, added by Caleb W Wing.
According to NR Ker's list "Medieval Manuscripts in British Libraries" (1960) the 19th century additions are those following folios: 15, 32, 39, 44, 49, 55, 66, and 96. The calendar, ff. v-xvi are also 19th century insertions.
Crudely-executed binding of green velvet over boards, 19th century, likely done by Jarman at the same time as the illustrations were inserted. |
| AdminHistory | The manuscript was written by the Venetian scribe Marcus de Cribellariis (or Marco di Vicenza). Additions were made to the manuscript by Caleb W Wing, who produced a series of lithographical local views distributed by the Royal Marine Library, Brighton, 1826. He was living in London and producing portrait miniatures, c1836, and subsequently produced hundreds of 'medieval' and 'Renaissance' miniature illuminations. Originally employed to restore damaged items for John Boykett Jarman, c1846, he subsequently produced new work for insertion into genuine medieval and Renaissance books, most directly copied or adapted from genuine works; it is unclear whether his additions were intended to deceive, for although he was known as a professional facsimilist, his work was sometimes regarded subsequently as genuine. He died in 1875. John Boykett Jarman was a collector and dealer with premises off Bond Street; his illuminated manuscripts were seriously damaged by flood water in 1846. He died in 1864. |
| CustodialHistory | The nineteenth-century additions to the manuscript are thought to have been made while it was in the possession of John Boykett Jarman. The manuscript was bought in the Jarman sale in 1864 by the bookseller Lilly, who sold it to William Bragge of Sheffield. It was bought by Quaritch at the Bragge sale in 1876, but returned, probably due to its spurious additions. It was sold at Sotheby's in 1881 to Alexander, Baron Peckover of Wisbech, whose bookplate is attached to the second end-page. Exhibited at the National Exhibition of Works of Art, Leeds, 1868.
Fifty-five leaves containing the penitential psalms in Italian, a litany, and other texts seem to have been originally part of this manuscript. These leaves, written for someone called Evangelista, were in the Celotti sale, 1825, and the Phillipps sale, 1903, in which they were sold to Sir Sydney Cockerell; they later belonged to Mr Brian S Cron. |
| PublnNote | Janet Backhouse, 'A Victorian connoisseur and his manuscripts: the tale of Mr Jarman and Mr Wing', The British Museum Quarterly, xxxii(3-4) (1967-1968), pp 76-92, particularly pp 83, 91, which reproduces pages from the manuscript (plate XXVIIb); Fake? The Art of Deception, ed Mark Jones (1990), pp 190-192, which reproduces a page from the manuscript; Sir Sydney S Cockerell in The Book Collector, i(2) (1952), p 83. |