Object details
Accession number
2.c.1.5
Creators
Full title
The Divine Comedy [La chomedia di Dante Alighieri da Firenze]
Creation Date
1410-1420
Object Case
Dante Case
Language
Italian
Publication Place
Florence
Binding Description
Light brown morocco with blind tooling (English, 19th century)
Description
I Vol. (135 leaves, 58 lines) : vellum : ill. ; 25 x 18 cm (folio)
Provenance
Collection of the Discalced Carmelites of the Florentine convent of San Paolo Apostolo (San Paolino), after 1618.
Collection of the British colonial governor and philhellene Frederick North, Fifth Earl of Guilford (1766–1827).
Offered at the Frederick North sale at R.H. Evans, London on 28-30 February 1829, lot 652.
Collection of the French deputy and book collector Jean-Baptiste Joseph Barrois (1784-1855), no. 23.
Purchased from Jean-Baptiste Joseph Barrois by Bertram Ashburnham, Fourth Earl of Ashburnham (1797-1878) in 1849.
By descent to Bertram Ashburnham, Fifth Earl of Ashburnham (1840-1913).
Purchased by Isabella Stewart Gardner from the Ashburnham sale at the booksellers Ellis & Elvey, London for £630 on 11 June 1901 through the scholar and critic Charles Eliot Norton (1827-1908), lot 153.
Marks
Affixed (front fly-leaf): bookplate of Frederick North (1766-1827)
Inscribed in pencil (bookplate of Frederick North): "Bourtourlin"
Inscribed in pencil (front flyleaf): "Barrois"
Inscribed in pencil (front flyleaf): "With the Commentaries of Boccaccio; manuscripts of this sort of extreme rarity"
Inscribed (f.1): Coat of arms of original owner [unidentfiable]
Stamped in black ink twice (f. 1): "CARM. DISCAL. S. PAULI. FLOR." [book-stamp of the Discalced Carmelites of the convent of San Paolo Apostolo, San Paolino, Florence]
Enclosed: Note with details of the purchase by Isabella Stewart Gardner from the Ashburnham-Barrois sale, lot 153 [written in Morris Carter's hand, ink on orange scrap paper]
Dimensions
25 x 18 cm (9 13/16 x 7 1/16 in.)
Display Media
Ink on vellum
Web Commentary
Isabella Stewart Gardner kept meticulous records of many of her acquisitions. In keeping with this legacy, object information is continually being reviewed, updated, and enriched in order to give greater access to the collection.
Permanent Gallery Location
Long Gallery
Bibliography
R. H. Evans. Catalogue of the Valuable and Extensive Library of the Late Earl of Guilford, Part 3 (London, 28-30 February 1829), lot 652.Edward Moore. Contributions to the Textual Criticism of the Divine Comedy (Cambridge, 1889), pp. 581-82.Sotheby, Wilkinson and Hodge. The Ashburnham Library: Catalogue of the Portion of the Famous Collection of Manuscripts... (London, 1901), pp. 57-58, lot 153.Isabella Stewart Gardner. A Choice of Books from the Library of Isabella Stewart Gardner, Fenway Court (Boston, 1906), p. 21. Isabella Stewart Gardner. A Choice of Manuscripts and Bookbindings from the Library of Isabella Stewart Gardner, Fenway Court (Boston, 1922), pp. 26-29.Seymour de Ricci and W.J. Wilson. Census of Medieval and Renaissance Manuscripts in the United States and Canada. Vol. 1. (New York, 1935), p. 932, no. 11.Rollin van N. Hadley. "Notes, Records, and Comments." Gardner Museum Calendar of Events 9, no. 7 (17 Oct. 1965), p. 2.Giorgio Petrocchi. Dante Alighieri, La Commedia second l’antica vulgata (Milan, 1966), p. 559.Bruno Sandkühler. Die frühen Dantekommentare und ihr Verhältnis zur mittelalterlichen Kommentartradition (Munich, 1967), p. 280.Vincenzo Cioffari. "Identity of the sources in the Gardner Dante Manuscript." Deutsches Dante Jahrbuch 58 (1983), pp. 87-101. Deborah Gribbon. "Report of the Curator." Fenway Court (1983), p. 55.Marcella Roddewig. Dante Alighieri, Die göttliche Komödie: vergleichende Bestandsaufnahme der Commedia-Handschriften (Stuttgart, 1984), p. 22, no. 44. Paul Oskar Kristeller. Iter italcium accedunt alia itinera: a finding list of uncatalogued or incompletly catalogued humanistic manuscripts of the Renaissance in Italian and other libraries, vol. V (London, 1990), p. 222, no. 11.Marisa Boschi Rotiroti. Codicologia trecentesca della Commedia: entro e oltre l'antica vulgata (Rome, 2004), pp. 19, 111, no. 17.Enrico Malato and Andrea Mazzucchi (eds.). Censimento dei commenti danteschi (Rome, 2011), I, no. 31, pp. 126, 138, 246, 258, 310, 321, 362, 399, 460-461, no. 11.Anne-Marie Eze. "Italian Illuminated Manuscripts at the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum." Rivista di Storia della Miniatura 16 (2012), pp. 81-84, 91-93, figs. 1-3. (as dated 1410-1420)University of Pennsylvania Libraries. Schoenberg Database of Manuscripts, no. 198051, accessed 6 October 2016. http://dla.library.upenn.edu/dla/schoenberg/record.html?q=198051&id=SCHOENBERG_198051&Anne-Marie Eze in Jeffrey F. Hamburger et al. Beyond Words: Illuminated Manuscripts in Boston Collections. Exh. cat. (Boston: Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum; Newton: McMullen Museum of Art, Boston College; Cambridge: Houghton Library, Harvard University, 2016), pp. 17, 233, 235, 263-65, 308, 311, no. 214, ill.
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