Displaying items by tag: illuminated manuscript

Australians will get their first look at one of the world’s most expensive illuminated manuscripts in May.

The National Library of Australia announced on Friday morning that the early sixteenth-century Rothschild prayerbook, owned by Australian businessman Kerry Stokes, will go on display for the first time in the southern hemisphere.

Stokes made headlines last year when he purchased the 150-page prayer book through London auction house Christie’s for $15.5m, making it the most expensive manuscript ever purchased at the time.

The J. Paul Getty Museum in Los Angeles has announced that it will voluntarily return a 12th-century Byzantine illuminated New Testament to the Monastery of Dionysiou in Greece after learning that it had been illegally removed from the monastery over 50 years ago. The Getty acquired the manuscript in 1983 as part of a “large, well-documented” collection.

The Getty conducted research into the manuscript with the Hellenic Ministry of Culture and Sports, which brought to light a 1960 monastery record that said that the work had been illegally removed. The report of the manuscript’s disappearance was never made public and no information was released to law enforcement officials or to any databases of stolen art.

The illuminated New Testament is currently on display at the Getty as part of the exhibition “Heaven and Earth: Byzantine Illumination at the Cultural Crossroad” and has been featured in 14 other shows at the museum. The Getty will return the manuscript to Greece after the exhibition closes on June 22. 

Christie’s Old Masters Week, which took place in New York from January 28 through January 30, garnered $68 million. The top lot was ‘The Rothschild Prayerbook,’ a masterpiece from the Flemish Renaissance that sold for $13.6 million, a record for an illuminated manuscript at auction.

‘The Rothschild Prayerbook’ is comprised of lavish and intricate illustrations by the most celebrated court artists of the Renaissance, including Gerard Horenbout and Alexander Bening. The book was most likely made around 1505 for someone connected to the imperial court in the Netherlands. Kay Sutton, the Director of Books and Manuscripts at Christie’s, said, “The Rothschild Prayerbook is a fabulous work of art and it has been an enormous pleasure and honour for us to be able to show it so widely and to such universal admiration -- an admiration recognized by the price it achieved at auction.”

Other highlights from Christie’s Old Masters Week included Francisco de Goya’s ‘Los Caprichos’, a set of 80 etchings that sold for $1.4 million; Tiepolo’s ‘I Cani Sapienti,’ which garnered $3.6 million, a record for a single work by the artist at auction; and a drawing by Peter Paul Rubens titled ‘Saint Ildefonso receiving the Chasuble from the Virgin,’ which netted $233,000.

‘The Book of Miracles,’ a nearly complete illustrated manuscript from the Renaissance, will be published in a new book. ‘The Book of Miracles,’ which surfaced a few years ago and recently entered a private collection, is composed of 169 pages with large-format illustrations in gouache and watercolor depicting celestial phenomena and constellations as well as scenes from the Old Testament and medieval tales.

The book was assembled by Till-Holger Borchert, an expert in Early Netherlandish paintings and the chief curator at the Groeningemuseum in Bruges, and Joshua P. Waterman, an expert on German art of the late medieval and early modern periods and a research associate at the Germanisches Nationalmuseum in Nuremberg.

Borchert and Waterman’s book includes ‘The Book of Miracles’ in its entirety for the first time, an introduction that helps explain the volume’s cultural and historical context, and an extensive description of the manuscript and its miniatures, as well as a complete transcript of the work’s text.

Germany’s Hildesheim Cathedral, which was designated a UNESCO world cultural heritage site in 1985, houses one of the most comprehensive surviving collections of ecclesiastical furnishings and medieval masterpieces in Europe. Built between 1010 and 1020, the church is undergoing major renovations, which has allowed for the exhibition Medieval Treasures from Hildesheim to go on view at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York.

The show presents 50 medieval treasures – many of which have never been viewed outside Europe – and explores the Hildesheim’s legacy. The first portion of the exhibition focuses on Bishop Bernward of Hildesheim (960-1022), one of leading patrons of the arts during the Middle Ages. The Bishop commissioned many treasures during his time including monumental bronze works, the Golden Madonna, elaborate silver candlesticks and illuminated manuscripts. The life-size woodcarving known as the Ringelheim crucifix, which he commissioned, is one of the earliest surviving three-dimensional sculptures of the Middle Age.

Medieval Treasures from Hildesheim goes on to explore the continuing artistic production of Hildesheim in the high Middle Ages. Works from this period that will be on view at the Met include jeweled crosses, altars adorned with enamel and ivory and gilt-bronze liturgical fans. In the early 13^th century Hildesheim became a major center for bronze casting. A monumental bronze baptismal font from this period will be display at the Met; it is one of the most important works to survive from the Middle Ages.  

Medieval Treasures from Hildesheim will be on view at the Met through January 5, 2014.

On Monday, April 29, 2013 the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York and the Israel Museum in Jerusalem announced that they had come together to jointly acquire the Mishneh Torah. A rare 15^th century illuminated Hebrew manuscript, the Mishneh Torah features text from Moses Maimonides, a Jewish writer and philosopher from the Middle Ages. The Met and the Israel Museum have agreed to exhibit the Torah at both institutions on a rotating schedule.

Created in 1457, the Mishneh Torah is the second of a two-volume manuscript and features six large illustrations and 32 smaller images in the style of Northern Italian Renaissance miniature painting. The Vatican owns the first volume of the manuscript. The Mishneh Torah was restored at the Israel Museum’s conservation lab and has been on loan to the institution since 2007.

The Mishneh Torah was to be the leading item at an auction of the collection of Michael and Judy Steinhardt on Monday at Sotheby’s. The manuscript, which was expected to bring between $4.5 million and $6 million at auction, was purchased by the museums before the sale began. Sotheby’s has declined to reveal how much the two institutions paid for the Mishneh Torah.

Michael Steinhardt, a hedge fund manager and philanthropist, and his wife, Judy, have amassed a renowned Judaica collection, which includes silver and decorative objects, textiles, and fine art. Steinhardt said, “The acquisition of this remarkable manuscript by the Israel Museum and the Metropolitan Museum of Art is poetic given Judy’s and my longstanding involvement with both institutions; it is particularly meaningful that this event marks the first significant collaboration between the two museums.”

Los Angeles’ J. Paul Getty Museum purchased a Flemish illuminated manuscript at Sotheby’s for $6.2 million on Wednesday, December 5. The Roman de Gillion de Trazegnies by Lieven van Lathem (1430-1493) consists of eight painted half-page miniatures and 44 historiated initials. Lathem is renowned for his paintings of secular scenes during the Flemish high Renaissance of manuscript illumination. The Roman de Gillion de Trazegnies is considered his finest work from the period.

The major acquisition adds to the Getty’s already phenomenal collection of 15^th century illuminated manuscripts, which includes Lathem’s only documented manuscript, The Prayer Book of Charles the Bold. Acquired in 1989, Prayer Book serves as the main reference for all other Lathem attributions. The purchase of the Roman de Gillion de Trazegnies joins two of the artist’s defining works in one collection – a remarkable feat.

Roman de Gillion de Trazegnies tells the story of the curious adventures of a nobleman from the family of Trazegnies, whose seat was in Hainaut (present-day Belgium). The tale mixes genres including travelogue, romance, and epic and follows the protagonist, Gillion, on a journey to Egypt, where he comes a bigamist and dies in battle as a hero.

The illumination had been on loan for the Getty’s 2003 landmark exhibition, Illuminating the Renaissance.