A Catalogue of Western Book Illumination in the FitzWilliam Museum and the Cambridge Colleges eds. by Nigel Morgan, Stella Panayotova, and Suzanne Reynolds (review)

The present catalog is volume II from the ongoing series “Illuminated Manuscripts in Cambridge”, comprising Italian and Iberian manuscripts from the Middle Ages through the seventeenth century, with pride of place given to the much richer Italian holdings (nos. 1-361). Vol. I, The Frankish Kingdoms, the Netherlands, Germany, Bohemia, Hungary and Austria (2 vols.) appeared in 2009, with France (III) and England (IV), plus Illuminated Incunabula (V) to follow. Inclusion in these geographic categories is by origin of the manuscript, but they are cross-referenced by early provenance and annotations as well (e.g. 364 below). The illuminated manuscripts of Cambridge University Library are being cataloged in a separate project and are not included here.

The Iberian illuminated manuscripts are entries 362-395 in volume 2 (i.e. less than 10% of the catalog), and largely consist of entire texts of one sort or another, with some 12 entries for fragments. Alas, the editors maintain a close focus, and nowhere relate the quantity of illluminated manuscripts to the total holdings of early manuscripts at Cambridge. The latter are largely from liturgical manuscripts, primarily from the nineteenth-century collection of cuttings amassed by Charles Brinsley Marlay; for those who want further information on Marlay himself and this shocking practice, see “The Bequest of Charles Brinsley Marlay” in the FitzWilliam Museum’s web exhibit “‘I turned it into a palace’: Sir Sydney Cockerell and the FitzWilliam Museum.”. Indeed the FitzWilliam Museum website has many resources related to these catalogs, including images that can be accessed via their “Collection Explorer”.

Standard entries for the entire project are detailed and description is technical but concise. Entries begin with a heading containing the number in this catalog, the library or museum holding the manuscript with its shelf mark, followed by a brief characterization of the manuscript, for example “Religious miscellany | In Latin | Spain, mid-twelfth century”. Next is a physical description of the object, the composition of the volume and the dimensions and features of the page, with a description of the binding, and identification of the secundo folio, of named scribes and identified artists, and of the script. There are sections for contents, decoration, and ornamentation; the latter are quite technical and are an inventory of significant features and salient individual decorative and ornamental elements, often illustrated.

When the decoration includes a coat of arms, the blazon is rendered in English heraldic style (for example, “or six fetterlocks sable, on a pale gules two fetterlocks sable”; 365). A “Provenance” section details all the indications of ownership, and traces the manuscript’s history as much as possible; many Cambridge colleges still hold their own medieval collections. The comments discuss more fully the details in the descriptive sections, relate the manuscript or fragment to others whether at Cambridge or in other collections, and discuss differing judgments on the particulars of the manuscript, including citations to the literature. Entries close with references to catalogs of exhibitions of the item, and to the literature discussing it, referring to the bibliographies at the end of Volume Two. For many items, only some of these categories of information apply, and only relevant sections of each entry are included. In the following, I will give an overview of the features of the Iberian collection(s) cataloged here, by groupings of various sorts, with a more detailed discussion of some few individual manuscripts, identifying them by catalog entry number, with a list of entries so discussed and their location and shelf mark at the end of my review.

Arranged chronologically within geographical area (Portugal with one entry, then Spain), the manuscripts are largely fifteenth- and sixteenth...