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San Marino, Huntington Library, HM 01162 Description: ff. iii + i + 162 (recte, 136) + i + ii - Bound by Derome le Jeune (with his ticket) in green morocco with gold dentelle tooling; pink silk doublures and endpapers; gilt edges; rust marks on the first and last parchment flyleaves from the clasps of a previous binding. - Written in Spain in the area of Toledo, as the entries in the calendar indicate; feminine forms in the prayers on ff. 14, 155 and 156. The coats of arms on ff. 10v and 48v are those of Charles V and Isabel of Portugal, impaled; the book must have been made between 1526 (their marriage) and 1539 (Isabel's death); miniatures done in Flanders. For another book of hours with the same arms and copied by the same scribe, see Doheny sale, Christie's, 2 December 1987, pt. 2, lot 175. Belonged to Count Justin MacCarthy-Reagh (1744-1811) of Toulouse; his sale through the Parisian bookseller De Bure in 1817, n. 396. Belonged to William Beckford (1759-1844) with his number 2 pencilled in on f. ii; he bequeathed his materials to his son-in-law, Alexander Hamilton, 10th Duke of Hamilton (1767-1852), whose library monogram "HB" and number 654 also appear on f. ii. Catalogued for sale, Sotheby's 1882, lot 461; before the sale, the collection was purchased in toto by the Prussian government; W. von Seidlitz, "Die illustrierten Handschriften der Hamilton-Sammlung (Schluss)," Repertorium fur Kunstwissenschaft 8 (1885) 94-110, esp. 104-05. Sotheby's, 23 May 1889, n. 32 with facsimile (no plates in the catalogue seen by us) to Trubner. Jacques Rosenthal Catalogue 27, n. 31. In the library of William K. Bixby (1857-1931) of St. Louis, whose book plate is on the front pastedown; portions of this collection were acquired by Henry E. Huntington in August 1918. - C. W. Dutschke with the assistance of R. H. Rouse et al., Guide to Medieval and Renaissance Manuscripts in the Huntington Library (San Marino, 1989). F. Winkler, Die Flamische Buchmalerei (Leipzig 1925) 140. De Ricci, 100. A. Biermann, "Die Miniaturenhandschriften Kardinals Albercht von Brandenburg (1514-1545)," Aachener Kunstblatter 46 (1975) 266 n. 93. J. H. Marrow, "Simon Bening in 1521, A Group of Dated Miniatures," in Liber Amicorum Herman Liebaers (Brussels 1984) 540. Notes:-ff. 136 (foliated to 162: "15" skipped; ff. 112-139 missing) Number of Parts: 2 - Number of Images Available: 0 Direct Link: http://ds.lib.berkeley.edu/HM01162_43 Language: Latin Country: Flanders Century: 16th About Versions of the Catalogue: http://www.digital-scriptorium.org/huntington/ Gallery of Images for this Manuscript: http://dpg.lib.berkeley.edu/webdb/dsheh/heh_brf?CallNumber=HM+1162 Full Huntington Catalogue Description: http://bancroft.berkeley.edu/digitalscriptorium/huntington/HM1162.html |
| We see in the Huntington Library information on this book that it was sold at the MacCarthy 1817 auction. This book may have been owned by Prefond and bound by Derome le jeune for him. We have read that Prefond sold his second collection of books to Mac Carthy in 1765 or 1775 or 1779 depending on who you believe. what we can say is that Mac Carthy imported his own binder from England, Richard Wier or Weir, a London bookbinder of Scottish origin, who spent several years at Toulouse working for Count MacCarthy Reagh, in the 1770's. |
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"Count Justin MacCarthy Reagh was born at Spring House, County Tipperary, on 18tth August, 1744, son of Denis MacCarthy, chief of the MacCarthy Reagh family, who owing to the severity of the Penal Laws went to France, where he died in 1761. Justin who was only seventeen at that time, realised his father's property and settled at Toulouse. In 1776, by letters-patent of Louis XVI, the title of Count was conferred on him and he was admitted to the honours of the court. He married Winifred Tuite of Westmeath and they had a large family. Two of his sons, the Abbe Nicholas and Robert Joseph had distinguished careers. Count MacCarthy was an accomplished linguist and classical scholar. He cultivated the fine arts and possessed one of the finest libraries in France, rivalling the King's collection at Paris. After his death in 1812, the Duke of Devonshire bought the library for 25,000 guineas, but Napoleon forbade its export from France, and when it came up for auction three years later, it only realised £16,500. The Toulouse branch of the MacCarthy family became extinct in the male line in 1906 by the death of Count Nicholas MacCarthy. Ramsden translates the following interesting passage from the foreword to the catalogue of the Count's library made by the De Bure brothers: "Count MacCarthy, desirous that the elegance and beauty of the bindings should correspond to the excellence and rarity of his books, and as Toulouse, where he always resided, did not provide the facility for having them bound, which he could have had if he had lived in Paris, he obtained from London a skilful binder whom he kept for several years solely working for his library". His binder, Richard Weir was of Scottish extraction. Weir's bindings are characterised by the wide borders and doublures. He was assisted by his wife who was skilled in ruling and paper repair." |
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So it seems unlikely that MacCarthy would have employed Derome to decorate this binding. We have seen on the previous page that the roulette used as an inner dentelle for this binding, dj-R-12, is found on books from 1781 and later, making this binding a little late to have been in the Prefond collection. The 1815 catalogue of the MacCarthy collection, was drawn up by De Bure freres... Jean-Jacques De Bure (14 decembre 1765-15 janvier 1853) et Marie-Jacques De Bure (29 novembre 1767-18 juin 1847) etaient installes rue Serpente, derniere adresse de leur pere Guillaume [II], et exercerent de 1803-1813 avec leur pere, puis ensemble jusqu'en 1838 sous la raison "De Bure freres." , There is a mention of this in the Huntington information stating that this book (HM 01162) was No. 396 in that auction catalogue, (click here to see it). |
| "396. Preces piae. In-8. m. vert, dent. tabis. SUPERBE MANUSCRIT sur Velin, en caracteres gothiques, contenant 162 feuillets, et execute en Espagne. Il est en-richi de 17 miniatures d'un fini precieux.Chaque miniature est accompagnee d'une explication ecrite en beaux characteres romains..." |
| This appears to correspond with the HM 01162 binding: in 8, green maroquin leather with a dentelle and tabis. |
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In Comparative Diagram 1, we see that there are some irregularities in this roulette which will assist us in recognizing it, the section of this roulette above the letter "A" comprises of only 4 links while most others have 5 with the exception of the part shown by the arrow which has 6. Below I show some interesting information about Richard Wier found in a Maggs Bros. 1996 publication Bookbinding in the British Isles: Sixteenth to the Twentieth Century, Part 1 It seems that Wier only worked for Mac Carthy for a few years, in the early 70's, thus, before MacCarthy acquired Prefonds collection, one wonders then who bound his books after Weir. According to the BnF a certain "Devers" from Lyon was making decorative bindings for MacCarthy from about 1780 onward, De Ricci shows signed example that dates to 1812 (see French Signed Bindings, Vol. 1 No. 102). Thus I suppose it is would be possible that Derome le jeune could have decorated this binding for MacCarthy sometime between 1774 and 1779, or it was decorated by Derome for a previous owner c 1781. If one day we see a photo of Derome's ticket that is inside it we may be able to pinpoint this date a bit more accurately... on the next page we are going to look at the bindings of Derome le jeune post 1780 these are an abrupt change from the "dentelles a l'oiseau" that he was making in 1769. |
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