A Most Sensational Manuscript from the Inner Circle of Giotto, Padua, c. 1305ff.: Unknown to the Market

Jacopo da San Geminiano (or Johannes de Caulibus = Pseudo-Bonaventura). Meditationes super vitam Christi. Latin manuscript in black and red ink on vellum, in a formal gothic bookhand. - Padua, 1305 and shortly after: Painter of the workshop or the inner circle of Giotto di Bondone. 27 paintings: three full-page, 21 large or half-page, one original drawing and 2 illuminated initials; several 2-line initials in gold leaf on red or blue penwork. - Small quarto (135 x 100 mm; justification 85 x 60 mm); 144 leaves of vellum, complete. Early (14th or 15th century) red velvet binding on wooden boards, the velvet worn away. In half morocco box.

This is one of the finest Italian manuscripts of the middle ages to come on the market for many decades. It has never been to the best of our knowledge at international auction sales for more than a hundred years. We give here only the shortest and most rapid oversight over its several fascinating features. First, it is one of the very earliest manuscripts – if not the oldest one –of the text, Meditationes super vitam Christi (until recently ascribed to Johannes de Caulibus) which we are authorized to call the founding text of medieval Franciscan thought and spiritualism. This fact alone would make this book a very special and enticing one. Second, it is complete and in a highly satisfying state of preservation.

But the most extraordinary feature of this manuscript – one which makes it unique even compared to the holdings of the oldest and most renowned Italian libraries – is the intimate relationship of its miniatures to the famous cycle of Giotto’s frescoes in the Arena Chapel in Padua, made for Enrico Scrovegni.

Indeed, several of the miniatures here – painted by a superbly gifted member of Giotto’s inner circle, most likely of his workshop, and not a genuine book illuminator – are related to those world-renowned paintings, but most of them in a very peculiar way: they do not just give imitations of the frescoes, but more often only of parts of them (one half, two thirds etc.) so that the only conclusion can be that they have been painted while Giotto was still at work(!).

Several of the miniatures are so to say a mixture of known figures and scenes from Giotto with additional parts of invention which are entirely our master’s own.

This is, accordingly, the manuscript nearest to the founding father of Italian painting that is imaginable. And as if this were not enough, it contains a wonderfully sketched drawing of the Flight to Egypt which escaped the notion of the painter when he illuminated the manuscript!

The manuscript – a marvel as to contents and miniatures – is in very fine state considering its age; only some slightest abrasions to a few of the miniatures are discernible. All in all, no finer monument of Italian art around 1300 is imaginable in private hands.

Please get in touch with us if you would like to read the extensive description in German – or an English translation – for this manuscript.

For comparison: Kiss of Judas, one of the panels in the Scrovegni Chapel

Another comparison from the panels in the Scrovegni Chapel:
the Lamentation of Christ

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