The Digital Walters is a branch of The Walters Art Museum Manuscripts Department.
This is a mid-fifteenth northern Italian manuscript, which contains nine books of letters by Leonardo Bruni.
Support: Parchment; Extent: iii+144+ii; 279 x 186 mm bound to 289 x 205 mm; Foliation: Modern foliation in ink, upper right recto; Collation: 1-14 (10), 15 (4); Signatures: Remains of quire and leaf signatures in ink in bottom right corner throughout latter half of the text; Catchwords: Horizontal catchwords in lower far right margin, verso
Single column; twenty-eight lines; ruled with double vertical and horizontal bounding lines in hard point; pricking extant; written area: 172 x 107 mm
Humanistic bookhand
Books 1-8 begin with four-line illuminated initials, gold with pen-lined branchwork twining around it, on a pink and green white-speckled ground outlined in blue; Book 9 begins with a two-line red initial; each individual letter of the book begins with a red initial outside the block of the text; marginalia throughout
For a full list of Decorations in this manuscript please see the Content and Decorations section by clicking on the [i] button in the top left corner of the image viewer above.
Previously Gordon MS 57
The final leaves of the last quire have been cut out
These are pages that we pulled aside that disrupted the flow of the manuscript reader. These may be bindings, inserts, bookmarks, and various other oddities.
Italy
Mid-15th century
Late eighteenth- or early nineteenth-century parchment, brown-stained panel on spine stamped in gold: ARETINI/ EPISTOLARI
Latin
Written in Florence in the mid-fifteenth century; early provenance unknown; according to James Hankins, who describes the text fully in "Bruni Manuscripts in North America: a Handlist," Nuovi Studi Storici 10 (1991) 55-90, the manuscript has been "attributed to the Florentine scribe Giovanni di Piero da Stia (c. 1406-1474)" by Albinia de la Mare (59); he adds that: Giovanni, who was probably a pupil of the better-known scribe Antonio di Mario, seems to have had a special connection with Bruni, as is evidenced by the extraordinarily high proportion of his identifiable MSS which are copies of Bruni's works; his teacher Antonio di Mario wrote the dedication copies of both the works of Bruni dedicated to Cosimo de' Medici; it seems likely, then, a priori that Giovanni da Stia's text should be close to the author's archetype (59-60); Hankins also notes that the text was "annotated and probably owned by the minor humanist Pietro di Luni who identifies himself in a marginal note" on fol. 45v: "Ita est. et testimonium perhibere possum ego P. Lunensis qui tunc temporis ad dictum concilium profectus vidi et miratus sum." (60); Hankins writes: Luni was a correspondent of Bruni and is known to have held a variety of posts in the papal curia and the papal states in the early and middle parts of the fifteenth century. . . It may well be. . . that Pietro's acquaintance with Bruni, documented from 1434, goes back as far as the Council of Constance; Petrus's other annotations in Gordan 57 and in another manuscript of his preserved in Viterbo show him to be conversant with some of the more esoteric facts of Florentine literary history (60-61); a two-line note in upper margin of fol. 1r: "Liber Aug[usti]ni [rest erased]; unidentified inventory number on inside cover may be Phillipps number: 10957. Bought by Howard L. Goodhart from an English dealer in the 1930's, and given by him to Phyllis Goodhart Gordan (bookplate) and John Dozier Gordan, Jr.; her bequest to Bryn Mawr College in 1995. Bookplate of Bryn Mawr College Library
Italy
Mid-15th century
Latin
Written in Florence in the mid-fifteenth century; early provenance unknown; according to James Hankins, who describes the text fully in "Bruni Manuscripts in North America: a Handlist," Nuovi Studi Storici 10 ; a two-line note in upper margin of fol. 1r: "Liber Aug[usti]ni [rest erased]; unidentified inventory number on inside cover may be Phillipps number: 10957. Bought by Howard L. Goodhart from an English dealer in the 1930's, and given by him to Phyllis Goodhart Gordan (bookplate) and John Dozier Gordan, Jr.; her bequest to Bryn Mawr College in 1995. Bookplate of Bryn Mawr College Library (provenance)
This is a mid-fifteenth northern Italian manuscript, which contains nine books of letters by Leonardo Bruni.
Previously Gordon MS 57
The final leaves of the last quire have been cut out
Humanistic bookhand
Books 1-8 begin with four-line illuminated initials, gold with pen-lined branchwork twining around it, on a pink and green white-speckled ground outlined in blue; Book 9 begins with a two-line red initial; each individual letter of the book begins with a red initial outside the block of the text; marginalia throughout
For a full list of Decorations in this manuscript please see the Content and Decorations section by clicking on the [i] button in the top left corner of the image viewer above.
These are pages that we pulled aside that disrupted the flow of the manuscript reader. These may be bindings, inserts, bookmarks, and various other oddities.
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