Beschreibung:

Collection of leaves from Italian illuminated and decorated manuscripts, in Latin, on vellum 5 leaves, including (a) single leaf from a decorated manuscript of Boethius' Consolatio Philosophiae, 247mm. by 173mm., with a large initial 'D' (opening "Dixerat orationis(que) cursum ..." the beginning of book V), 55mm. by 72mm., in purple-red touched in white penwork and enclosing full-length portrait of God the father as a bearded man enthroned, holding Christ on the Cross, all on blue ground heightened with white circles and stars, extremities of initial extending into margin with large fleshy leaves, single column, 27 lines in black ink in an excellent angular Italian hand, a number of small interlinear glosses in a contemporary cursive hand, Italy, early fifteenth century; (b) half a leaf bisected laterally from a monumental Lectionary, 265mm. by 357mm., with a large initial 'H' (opening "Haec domini verba ..." St. Augustine's Tractatus in Iohannem 101), 48mm. by 40mm., formed of two green and white fish and a green and yellow bird with red feet, all on blue grounds edged in red, double column, 23 lines in dark brown ink in a good early Gothic hand, rubrics in red, one 3-line initial in red, recovered from a book binding and with some folds, but in excellent condition, Italy (probably Tuscany), mid-twelfth century; (c) text leaf from a Lectionary, 328mm. by 233mm., single column, 22 lines in dark brown ink in a large rounded early Gothic hand, rubrics in red, three 3-line initials in red and blue, with delicate internal patterns left as blank vellum within bodies of initials, two with penwork tracery into margin, one terminating in a 'feathery' tail, in excellent condition, Italy, third quarter of twelfth century; plus two other text leaves from an early fourteenth century Psalter and a fifteenth-century Breviary, both with a number of simple initials with elaborate penwork tracery (the former with two line-drawn bird-like drollery creatures in margin), all in card mounts