State Library of Victoria Medieval Manuscripts Online

The Ascension of Christ, historiated initial ‘C’, Italy, 15C

(State Library of Victoria, RARES 096 IL I)

The State Library of Victoria in Melbourne holds 27 medieval and renaissance manuscripts. Last year the SLV finished digitising nearly all of its manuscripts along with five manuscripts held by the Art Gallery of Ballarat.

The digitisation scheme stemmed from an Australian Research Council (ARC) funded project, which involved a number of activities, including the digitisation of the manuscripts in the State Library of Victoria and select manuscripts from the Ballarat Fine Art Gallery, together with the development of on-line links with other manuscript collections in Australia and New Zealand and the contribution of research findings to manuscripts in these collections as appropriate. The project is spearheaded by Professor Margaret Manion, whose team is creating detailed entries on each manuscript which are being uploaded into the catalogue records. A full list of participating individuals and institutions is provided in each of the detailed entries.

The project followed on from the SLV's highly successful 2008 exhibition 'The Medieval Imagination', which brought together manuscripts from collections in Australia, New Zealand and Cambridge, UK, and saw over 100,000 people pass through its doors. Some of the notable SLV manuscripts displayed and now digitised include: an early thirteenth-century copy of Ptolemy's Almagest with astronomical diagrams and translated from the Arabic by Gerard of Cremona; a mid-eleventh-century manuscript of Boethius's De musica (the oldest known book in Australia); a fifteenth-century illustrated copy in English vernacular prose of Guillaume de Deguileville's The pilgrymage of the Lyfe of Manhoode and The pilgrymage of the Sowle; and a lavish fifteenth-century manuscript comprising three works (including the Scriptores historiae Augustae) commissioned for Lorenzo de Medici and still in its original binding.

As a way of promoting these manuscripts, I have listed them below with links to the digitised versions (title hyperlinks), catalogue records, many of which include provenance information, and the detailed descriptions completed to date. References cited in the records refer to:

Margaret Manion and Vera F. Vines, Medieval and Renaissance Illuminated Manuscripts in Australian Collections (Melbourne: Thames and Hudson, 1984)

K. V. Sinclair, Descriptive Catalogue of Medieval and Renaissance Western Manuscripts in Australia (Sydney: Sydney University Press, 1969)

Bronwyn Stocks and Nigel Morgan (eds.), The Medieval Imagination: Illuminated Manuscripts from Cambridge, Australia and New Zealand (South Yarra, Vic: MacMillan Art Pub., 2008)

And now the manuscripts!

State Library of Victoria
1. Boethius; Anon. [sometimes called Pseudo-Hucbaldus], De musica; Musica enchiriadis [and] De organo, Northern Italy, eleventh century
Catalogue record
Description

2. Petrus Comestor; Stephen Langton, Historia scholastica; Expositio litteralis in historiam scholasticam [and] Exposito moralis in historiam scholasticam, 1200
Catalogue record

3. Epistles of St. Paul with the Glossa ordinaria by Anselm of Laon, Central Italy (Gaeta), ca. 1200
Catalogue record
Description

4. Ptolemy, Almagest, translated from the Arabic by Gerard of Cremona, Northern Italy (the Veneto?), ca. 1200–1225
Catalogue record
Description

5. Psalter-Hours, Use of Liège, Latin and French, Southern Netherlands (Liège), ca. 1270–1279
Catalogue record

6. Vulgate Bible (Leviticus) with the Glossa ordinaria of Walafrid Strabo, France (Paris), perhaps first quarter of the thirteenth century
Catalogue record
Description

7. Antiphonal (fragment), Central or Northern Italy, late thirteenth or early fourteenth century
Catalogue record
Description

8. Statutes and treatises on medieval English law, Latin and Law French, ca. 1300
Catalogue record
Description

9. Antiphonal-Hymnal, Dominican use, with excerpt of De musica of Jerome of Moravia, France (Paris), 1335–1345
Catalogue record

10. John of Gaddesden, Rosa Anglica, England, fourteenth century
Catalogue record

11. Flavius Josephus, De bello judaico libri VII: Latin translation attributed to Rufinus of Aquileia, Spain (Catalonia), 1400
Catalogue record

12. Forty-nine illuminated and historiated initials from Italian manuscripts (cuttings), Italy, fourteenth and fifteenth century
Catalogue record
Description

13. Giles of Rome, Archbishop of Bourges, De regimine principum, France, 1429
Catalogue record

14. Guillaume de Deguileville, The pilgrimage of the lyfe of the manhode; and, The pilgrimage of the sowle, England (Lincolnshire), ca. 1430
Catalogue record 
Description

15. Book of Hours (fragmentary), France (Besancon), ca. 1430–1440
Catalogue record

16. Eutropius; Paul the Deacon, Scriptores historiae Augustae and Breviarium ab urbe condita; translations and additions by Paul the Deacon; Historia Romana by Paul the Deacon, Italy (Florence), ca. 1479
Catalogue record

17. Book of Hours, Use of York, Flanders (Bruges), ca. 1470–ca. 1490
Catalogue record
Description

18. Book of Hours, Use of Paris, France (Paris), ca. 1490
Catalogue record
Description

19. Book of Hours, Use of Rome, Southern Netherlands, ca. 1490
Catalogue record

20. St. Jerome, Commentaries on Isaiah, Netherlands (Roermond, Limburg), 1497
Catalogue record

21. 16. St. Augustine, Bishop of Hippo, Augustini opera, fifteenth century
Catalogue record
Description

22. Liber Obsequialis, Use of Constance, and Breviary (fragment), Latin and German, Southern(?) Germany, (1) fifteenth and (2) early twelfth century
Catalogue record
Description

23. Pontifical, for the Bishop of Mirepoix, France, ca. 1500–ca. 1520
Catalogue record

24. Liber antiphonarius Romanus, 1566
Catalogue record


Art Gallery of Ballarat
1. Eadmer (d. 1124?); Bede, Life of St Wilfrid and extracts from Bede's Historia ecclesiastica, Northern England, 1150
Catalogue record

2. Pontifical, with excerpts from the Summa theologia of St Thomas Aquinas and the Regula ad inveniendum principium lunae (added 1451), Italy (Veneto or Emilia-Romagna), ca. 1350–1380
Catalogue record

3. Calendar and medical diagrams, Northeast England (Durham?), ca. 1400–1420
Catalogue record

4. Book of Hours, Use of Rome, Italy (Florence), 1450
Catalogue record

5. Prayer Book, Southern Netherlands, ca. 1544
Catalogue record

Hypnerotomachia Poliphili: Woodcuts in the Italian and French Editions

First published by Aldus Manutius in 1499 and praised for its typographical design and early Renaissance woodcut illustrations, the Hypnerotomachia Poliphili is one of the most famous books to come from a fifteenth-century press.

A second Aldine edition appeared in 1545, followed by the first French edition in 1546. Titled Hypnerotomachie, ou, Discours du Songe Poliphile, the translation was printed in Paris by Jacques Kerver. Its woodcuts in the Mannerist style were based on the Aldine editions, but adapted to suit French tastes and included an additional 14 illustrations.

The identity of the artists who executed the woodcuts in the Italian and French editions remains a subject of debate amongst academic circles. The designs in the 1499 edition have been associated with Benedetto Bordon, Andrea Mantegna, Gentile Bellini, and even a young Raphael.[1] The illustrations in the 1546 French edition exhibit evidence of more than one artist at work, with the painter Jean Cousin and the architect and sculptor Jean Goujon considered likely candidates for the best woodcuts.

University of Melbourne Special Collections is fortunate to count the first Italian and French editions of the Hypnerotomachia amongst its holdings of early printed material, allowing for the following comparison of illustrations in two of the hand-press period’s most beautifully illustrated books.

[1] http://www.metmuseum.org/toah/works-of-art/23.73.1

Poliphilo enters a pathless forest (1499)

Poliphilo enters a pathless forest (1546)

Poliphilo encounters a wolf in his dreamscape (1499)

Poliphilo encounters a wolf in his dreamscape (1546)

The pyramid with obelisk (1499)

The pyramid with obelisk (1546)

Dancers carved on the base of a statue (1499)

Dancers carved on the base of a statue (1546)

Poliphilo flees from a dragon (1499)

Poliphilo flees from a dragon (1546)

Poliphilo meets Theude and her servants (1499)

Poliphilo meets Theude and her servants (1546)

From the second triumph (1499)

From the second triumph (1546)

The bridge over the frozen lake; where are the souls? (1499)

The bridge over the frozen lake; complete with souls (1546)

Sixteenth-Century Manuscript Could Rewrite Australian History [Updated]

[Update, 18.01.14: 'That's No Kangaroo on the Manuscript' from livescience.com]

Story from today's The Age reported by Charli Newton:

Image of what is thought to be a kangaroo on a 16th-century processional could lend weight to the theory that the Portuguese were the first explorers to set foot on Australian soil, before the Dutch or English.

A tiny drawing of a kangaroo curled in the letters of a 16th-century Portuguese manuscript could rewrite Australian history.

The document, acquired by Les Enluminures Gallery in New York, shows a sketch of an apparent kangaroo (''canguru'' in Portuguese) nestled in its text and is dated between 1580 and 1620. It has led researchers to believe images of the marsupial were already being circulated by the time the Dutch ship Duyfken - long thought to have been the first European vessel to visit Australia - landed in 1606.

The pocket-sized manuscript, known as a processional, contains text and music for a liturgical procession and is inscribed with the name Caterina de Carvalho, believed to be a nun from Caldas da Rainha in western Portugal.

The manuscript may precede what is believed to be the first European docking in Australia.

The European discovery of Australia has officially been credited to the Dutch voyage headed by Willen Janszoon in 1606, but historians have suggested the country may already have been explored by other western Europeans.

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''A kangaroo or a wallaby in a manuscript dated this early is proof that the artist of this manuscript had either been in Australia, or even more interestingly, that travellers' reports and drawings of the interesting animals found in this new world were already available in Portugal,'' Les Enluminures researcher Laura Light said.

''Portugal was extremely secretive about her trade routes during this period, explaining why their presence there wasn't widely known.''

Peter Trickett, an award-winning historian and author of Beyond Capricorn, has long argued that a Portuguese maritime expedition first mapped the coast of Australia in 1521-22, nearly a century before the Dutch landing.

''It is not surprising at all that an image of a kangaroo would have turned up in Portugal at some point in the latter part of the 16th century. It could be that someone in the Portuguese exhibition had this manuscript in their possession,'' Mr Trickett said.

National Library of Australia curator of maps Martin Woods said that while the image looked like a kangaroo or a wallaby, it alone was not proof enough to alter Australia's history books.

''The likeness of the animal to a kangaroo or wallaby is clear enough, but then it could be another animal in south-east Asia, like any number of deer species, some of which stand on their hind legs to feed off high branches,'' Dr Woods said.

''For now, unfortunately the appearance of a long-eared big-footed animal in a manuscript doesn't really add much.''

Les Enluminures Gallery, which lists the manuscript's value at $US15,000 ($16,600), acquired the processional from a rare book dealer in Portugal and will exhibit the piece as part of an exhibition.

Also entwined in letters of the text are two male figures adorned in tribal dress, baring naked torsos and crowns of leaves, which Ms Light said could be Aborigines.

Fellow of the Australian Academy of the Humanities, John Gascoigne, said proving that the Portuguese were the first Europeans to arrive in Australia would be ''forever difficult to document because of their secrecy and because so many of the records were destroyed in the Lisbon earthquake of 1755''.

''The possible date span for the manuscript goes up to 1620, which would accommodate the arrival of Willen Janszoon in the Duyfken in northern Australia in 1606,'' Professor Gascoigne said.

He speculated the images could come from a 1526 trip to Papua.

''Looking at it from a European perspective, it is surely evocative to wonder what these exotic images must have meant to the Portuguese nun gazing at them from within the confines of her convent's walls,'' Ms Light said.