Sunday, December 16, 2012

The Book of Hours of Henry VIII, 15th Century

The miniature shows Adrian's two-part martyrdom. He is seated on the anvil, his intestines having already fallen out, as two executioners begin to hack off his legs. Adrian looks heavenward, while in the background Natalia prays contentedly; the emperor, at the left, directs the torture. N. of the A. : for further detail regarding St. Adrian's BIO go to the end of this post...

The Book of Hours of Henry VIII is hosted in the Morgan Library & Museum, in New York under H.8 tag (Henry 8). Receives its name from the possible but unproven eighteenth-century tradition that holds King Henry of England once owned this splendid manuscript. This lavish Book of Hours -I've seen a lot but the detail on each illumination in this manuscript makes this in particular unique- receives its name from King Henry VIII of England, second monarch of the House of Tudor. About the author, Jean Poyer, was a French miniature painter and manuscript illuminator, active from 1483 until his death. He worked in the courts of Louis XI of France, Charles VIII of France and Louis XII of France.
The manuscript contains the standard texts—Calendar, Gospel Lessons, Hours of the Virgin, Hours of the Cross, Hours of the Holy Spirit, Penitential Psalms with Litany, Office of the Dead, and Suffrages; as well as a number of common accessory prayers.
References: (internal,) see other related posts on facsimilium- The amazing "Book of Hours from Rouen", 15th Century and Book of hours (use of Rome), 15th Century. External references: about The Book of Hours of Henry VIII, I do recommend the spanish editor Manuel Moleiro webpage (english version available). For the rest of this post, I'll focus on the splendid calendar -located on manuscript first chapters-:

(January) Inside, the lord of the house sits at his meal, his back to the hearth, as his wife, closer to the fire, warms her hands. While a heavy snow covers the land, a laborer carries a few logs from the woodpile into the manor.

February's labor is not much different from January's. The lord of the house, richly dressed in fur-lined garments and hat, raises the folds of his clothes, the better to warm his backside. His attention has been caught by his servant, who enters with flagons of wine.


In the early spring month of March, work begins outdoors with the typical labor of pruning the vineyard. Workers trim the leafless vines and tie them to the grape arbor. A wood cask for drink is in the foreground.

 With April, the landscape becomes green and alive, and the month's activity is not laborious, but one for the leisure class. A foppishly dressed youth, his hands filled with freshly picked spring flowers, waits while his lady friend weaves the blossoms into a garland.
Another leisurely couple partakes of May's pleasure, the gathering, on the first of the month, of flowering or leafing branches. While one dog slowly leads the couple along a dirt path marked by branches tied across tree boughs, a second dog runs deeper into the woods on an uncharted track.

Summer's hard labors of the begin in June with the mowing of the hay. Three men rhythmically attack the field with large scythes. Two women rake the loose hay into stacks. Behind them, a wagon waits to be filled. In the foreground at the right are the workers' bundles of food and casks of drink.

The summer harvest continues in July with the reaping of the wheat. Four men, minimally dressed to keep cool, carefully cut the stalks with sickles and lay them in neat bundles. As in June, the foreground features, in the manner of a still life, their containers of food and drink.
The wheat harvest continues in August as the cut stalks are brought in oxcarts to the barn, where three men beat them with jointed flails. Threshing with flails loosens the kernels of wheat from their stalks so that they can then be winnowed and thus separated from the chaff.

The task for September is wine making, an activity that requires a division of labor between men and women. In the fields in the background, seated women pick the grapes, while a man stands, awaiting a full basket to bring to the winepress. Inside the barn men dump their baskets into large winepresses where the fruit is trampled. Crushed, the grapes are then transferred to a large vat from which, at the bottom, the liquid can be extracted for storing and aging in the nearby barrels.
In October the winter wheat is sown. The man at left sows the field with grain he holds in his apron. The man on the right plows his field with a team of white horses.



In November the labor is to take the pigs to the forest and rattle the branches of the oak trees so they shed their acorns, thus fattening up the animals.

The portrait of this post is about St. Adrian's Martyrdom. Adrian (or Hadrian) was a young Praetorian Guard in Nicomedia under Emperor Maximian (r. 286–305). The soldier was converted by witnessing the steadfast confidence of a group of Christians under torture. Impressed by their constancy, he asked to be counted among their ranks. Needless to say, Adrian was promptly arrested and imprisoned. His new wife, Natalia, (a secret Christian) was overjoyed, ran to the prison, and encouraged him to remain firm in his new faith, kissing his chains. When he learned the date of his impending martyrdom, the saint convinced the guards to allow him to tell his wife so that she could witness the event.

On the day of his death (ca. 300), Adrian was first beaten so severely that his "bowels fell out." After he was returned to prison, the emperor ordered that the legs of all the imprisoned martyrs be broken on an anvil and cut off. Natalia, who was present, additionally requested that the guards cut off her husband's hands, so that he would be equal to other saints who had suffered more. After Adrian's death Natalia managed to get away with a hand (holding it to her bosom), taking it with her to Argyropolis, where she died peacefully.

Saturday, November 17, 2012

The Matriculation Register of the Basel Rectorate, 15th Century



The Matriculation Register of the Basel Rectorate, from Basel University -founded in 1460, it is Switzerland's oldest university-, has been recorded in manuscript form from 1460 to 2000 (!!). Not sure about the last years, no info is available about this codex-register on Basel University official web site (or at least I couldn’t find).
The register contains semester and annual information notices added by each successive rector as well as lists of enrolled students, providing an important resource for the history of the University of Basel.
First three volumes are richly illuminated, not the rest of volumes of this collection. (Images on this posts are mainly from volume one and three, where I could find the most lavish color illuminations). The work of 3 centuries is easily datable due to the chronogical order in which it was added and thus provides a welcome demonstration of the art of miniature painting in Basel.

Additional technical information about the codexes: Format: 29 x 20,5 cm, number of pages is variable (volume 1 has 232), Page layout: writing space and number of lines alternately. Student lists are often not from the same hand. Page titles are usually available, some written by the individual principals, partly. Does not contain handwritten messages by students.
An easy option for an intro to the Basel University is wikipedia (link here).
For a high resolution, pdf version of this manuscript, contact me (facsimilium AT gmail DOT com).





 
As a curious note, some of the persons that appear on the ALUMNI LIST:

Emil Abderhalden (1877–1950), Swiss biochemist and physiologist
Paul Erdman (1932–2007), American business and financial writer
Carl Jung (1875–1961), Swiss psychiatrist, and founder of Analytical Psychology
Michael Landmann (1913–84), Swiss philosopher
Yeshayahu Leibowitz (1903–94), Israeli public intellectual and polymath
Alice Miller, psychologist and author
William Theilheimer (1914–2005), German scientist
Paul van Buren (1924–98), American Christian theologian and author
Iona Yakir (1896–1937), Red Army commander

Erasmus, Paracelsus, Daniel Bernoulli, Jacob Burckhardt, Leonhard Euler, Friedrich Nietzsche, Eugen Huber, Carl Jung, Karl Barth, Hermann Peter, Hans Urs von Balthasar are also mentioned on the register (sometimes as collaborators, in the alumni list, etc.)

Thursday, November 1, 2012

"Loccupletissimi Rerum Thesauri Accurata Descriptio“ or the rarest natural objects ever seen, 18th Century



What we have today is another excellent representative case of science revolution in all Europe during 17th-18th Century. When I investigated to write this post, I couldn't avoid feel same admiration I felt when I got deep in detail writing Robert Hooke's post ("The Micrographia"). 
Albertus Seba -A pioneer of the empirical science- simply started as apprentice of Pharmacy, preparing drugs with his own secret formulas, most of the times based on exotic plants and animals. His studio was located in Amsterdam, close to the harbour, so he was in contact with captains and ship surgeons -or simply sailors- to bring him exotic specimens, he later used to prepare his “formulae”. He also prepared drugs, some of his customers were Kings, like Peter the Great. Mr Seba’s house was full of well preserved snakes, insects, shells, lizards… His collection included all sorts of exquisite pieces from the East and West Indies, among these no less than 700 jars containing the rarest exotic animals and many particularly rare snakes. Even the finest and most complete butterflies collection from the 4 corners of the Earth.





Seba did not stop there, he continued the search for new methods, collecting natural specimens from distant lands, studying them, and testing their potential uses. His passion for collecting and researching often extended beyond immediate pharmaceutical applications. In many instances apothecaries started major natural history collections and contributed personally to the growing knowledge of nature. Seba's collection of natural specimens also went far beyond what was required for the normal exercise of his profession.
Seba commissioned artists to make meticulous drawings of these diverse objects from his collection. He went on to publish these drawings, supplemented by commentary, in a four-volumed set entitled Loccupletissimi Rerum Thesauri Accurata Descriptio (abbreviated in the following as Thesaurus, or the rarest natural objects ever seen -that's my particular translation-). All the plates I'm posting on this blog entry are part of this Book.

 
This large and magnificent work, incorporating an impressive total of 446 copperplates, was published between 1734 and 1765, hence also posthumously. Seba made a lot of money selling his collections. Once he sold a collection, he immediately set about establishing a second one that eventually became even larger!!
Some of the images I post below are from Taschen color facsimil edition of the "Loccupletissimi Rerum Thesauri Accurata Descriptio“.

External links related
Albertus Seba's collection of natural specimens and its pictorial inventory, by TASCHEN Books Group, link here.
One of my Blog Sponsors, Amazon, has also a facsimil ed. for this amazing Book. Good flexibility: 2 new brand, price is 2495 USD or 8 used, better price: 625 USD (at least until November 1st, 2012)... I  can't afford any option :) -so far-. Anyway link to Amazon for this is here.
theguardian made a brief article about this Book, text is poor but they host some color versions of the B/W images I posted here today. Link to access is here.
And finally, the surprise (I was really impressed about this) : The Biodiversity Heritage Library has a complete "OCRed" digital facsimil. That means that you can even do text searchs on the original... Goood JOB! I think I'll spend more time on the biodiversity heritage web page ;

For a high resolution, pdf version of this manuscript, contact me (facsimilium AT gmail DOT com).