Western Manuscripts and Miniatures

Freeman's Auctions Sale #6522: The third annual sale of Western Manuscripts and Miniatures on 9 July represents the strongest offering in the series to date. Curated in collaboration with the internationally renowned manuscript scholar Dr. Sandra Hindman, the sale brings together an exceptional selection of medieval and Renaissance manuscripts, illuminated leaves, and miniatures, creating a survey of manuscript production spanning centuries of European artistic and intellectual achievement.

At the heart of the sale are two distinguished collections of illuminated Books of Hours assembled by European bibliophiles in Switzerland and Germany. Richly decorated and remarkably preserved, these manuscripts feature the work of some of the most accomplished illuminators of the fifteenth century, including the Master of the Pink Canopies Saints, the Rosenberg Master, the Master of the Lee Hours, and a close collaborator of Willem Vrelant. Also among the highlights is the Missal of Jean d'Amboise, a rare and important manuscript created for Jean I d'Amboise, bishop-duke of Langres and peer of France, offering one of the finest surviving examples of late fifteenth-century Champagne illumination.

A remarkable Romanesque manuscript from a Swiss private collection stands among the sale's most important offerings. Almost certainly produced at Lambach Abbey—one of the great centers of medieval art, learning, and scientific culture—the manuscript contains Origen's homilies on Genesis and Exodus, extensively decorated with initials and a full-page drawing. Preserved in its published medieval binding and still bearing the abbey shelfmark, it is an exceptional survival from one of Europe's most influential monastic scriptoria. Additional textual treasures include a twelfth-century copy of Peter the Venerable's treatise on heresy, formerly in the collection of the renowned medieval historian Giles Constable.

The sale's illuminated leaves are led by a substantial group of Romanesque and early Gothic works from the celebrated collection of Robert McCarthy. Many of these pieces have been published and exhibited, including leaves from monumental Atlantic Bibles, a rare Mozarabic Spanish miniature with sister leaves in major museum collections, and an Italian cutting from the Lives of the Saints by the so-called Master of Monza. Together, these works offer collectors a rare opportunity to acquire examples from some of the most important artistic traditions of the medieval world.

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