Second report: 3 lots (updated)

10 July 2012
London, Sotheby’s, Sale L12240.
Western Manuscripts and Miniatures

(a) Lot 27.
Statius, Thebaid, Achilleid, and Silvae.
Vellum MS, Latin, 191 folios extant; lacking some leaves; “probably” Naples, “1472 or soon after”, and “almost certainly written and illuminated for Ferdinand I (1423-94)” (catalogue, p. 26).
Estimate: £300,000-500,000. Price realised: £361,250.
Notes: Presumed to be item 98 in a s.XV list of the royal Aragonese library. Detailed discussion and description in catalogue, pp. 26-29, with 3 plates. This is the MS listed as no. 517 (not ‘p. 517’ as stated by the sale catalogue) in Lisardo Rubio Fernández, Catálogo de los manuscritos clásicos latinos existentes en España (Madrid: Universidad Complutense, 1984), p. 431, described at Palma de Mallorca in the private library of the Marqués de Campfranco.
MIMSS Catalogue Number: LS2012071000270008.

London, Sotheby’s, Sale L12242.
The History of Western Script. Sixty Important Manuscript Leaves from the Schøyen Collection.

(b) Lot 21.
Smaragdus, Latin Commentary on the Rule of St Benedict.
Single vellum leaf, Visigothic script, Spain (“perhaps Burgos province”), s.X. Schøyen Collection, MS 73.
Estimate: £50,000-70,000. Unsold at auction.
Notes: Description in catalogue, with two plates.
MIMSS Catalogue Number: LS2012071000210007.

(c) Lot 22.
Liturgical volume, fragments, “perhaps a Missal”; texts of Lamentations and I Peter.
Three fragments, rescued from binding, totalling remains of 11 lines. Visigothic script, Spain, s. XI. Schøyen Collection, MS 190.
Estimate: £10,000-15,000. Price realised: £23,750.
Notes: Description and three plates in catalogue.
MIMSS Catalogue Number: LS2012071000220006.