The Getty Museum has just added to their already superb collection by the acquisition of the Abbey Bible, an Italian illuminated manuscript that exemplifies the highest achievements of the Gothic era. The Bible is named for a previous owner, who was a celebrated collector of Italian manuscripts.
The museum says it will go on display Dec. 13 as a highlight of the upcoming exhibition, “Gothic Grandeur: Manuscript Illumination 1250-1350.”
Produced for the use of a Dominican monastery, the Abbey Bible is one of the earliest and finest in a distinguished group of north Italian Bibles from the second half of the thirteenth and early fourteenth centuries, most of which have come to be associated with Bologna, one of the major centers for the production of Gothic illuminated Bibles. Its illumination is a superb example of the Byzantine style of the eastern Mediterranean that played such a dominant role in Italian painting and manuscript illumination in the second half of the thirteenth century.
“Sensitively depicted facial expressions…reveal the artist to be a skilled storyteller, and the pages brim with incident and event,” the Getty says. The marginal vignettes of the Abbey Bible are remarkable for their liveliness and delicacy. In this case, marginal means "in the margins of the pages, not marginal as in unimportant.
“It is extremely rare for a complete Italian volume of this splendid quality to come onto the market. The Abbey Bible is set apart by its unusually lavish illumination that spills into the margins, often activating the entire page with whimsical figures, Biblical narratives, and images of Dominicans and Franciscans in prayer,” said Thomas Kren, acting associate director for collections at the J. Paul Getty Museum.
“There is a restrained elegance and emotional tension within the enclosed initials that works together with the physical exuberance in the margins,” adds Elizabeth Morrison, acting senior curator of manuscripts. “There’s a vitality in these finely painted tiny figures that gloriously flow across the page but are also exceptionally refined.”
Filled with drolleries, grotesques and dynamic pen flourishes, the Bible was nevertheless intended for serious use and study, as evidenced by the many edits, corrections, and amendments to the text, which suggest a university origin for the manuscript. Devout Dominicans and Franciscans appear prominently in its imagery, further testifying that the bible was originally produced for use by the Dominican order.
The museum wouldn’t say what it spent to acquire the Bible this summer.
In July 2010, Christie’s in London offered it at auction as part of its multi-part sale of the Arcana Collection, a trove of medieval and Renaissance illuminated manuscripts that the British newspaper, the Daily Mail reported had been collected over three decades by an anonymous American businessman.
Christie’s experts had predicted that the Abbey Bible, named for a British major who owned it from 1965 to 1989, could command a high bid of $4 million to $5.6 million, but it went unsold at the auction. According to Christie’s description, the Abbey Bible measures 10.6 inches by 7.8 inches and consists of 514 leaves of vellum; the artistry is found in 125 large, decorated capital letters, and in scenes and decorations painted in the margins of about 80 of the pages.
The Bible adds to the growing strength of the Getty Museum’s Italian manuscript holdings, which include important illuminated works by Niccolò da Bologna, Taddeo Crivelli, and Giovanni di Paolo. It also complements the Museum’s Italian paintings collection, specifically Madonna and Child by the Master of Saint Cecilia, ca. 1290-95 and splendid works by fourteenth-century masters including Bernardo Daddi, Simone Martini, and Pacino di Bonaguida.
http://www.artfact.com/auction-lot/the-abbey-bible,-with-prologues-attributed-to-st-1-c-b02bf29658
San Francisco Public Library Harrison Collection: http://sfpl.org/index.php?pg=2000007501
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