New York, Pierpont Morgan Library, M. 521 and M. 724 Pictorial Preface to a Psalter (with Cambridge Trinity College R. 17. 1 [ 85], London, British Library, Add. 37472(1) [165a], London, Victoria and Albert Museum 661 [319a]) [Ker -, Gneuss -]

Abstract

332a. New York, Pierpont Morgan Library,

M. 521 and M. 724

Pictorial Preface to a Psalter

(with Cambridge Trinity College R. 17. 1 [ 85],

London, British Library, Add. 37472(1) [165a],

London, Victoria and Albert Museum 661 [319a])

[Ker -, Gneuss -]

HISTORY: Two illustrated leaves thought to be from the "Eadwine Psalter" (Cambridge, Trinity College, R. 17. 1 [85]), dated to ca. 1155-1160 from Christ Church, Canterbury, and forming part of an illustrated preface to the "Eadwine Psalter" along with the two other leaves London, BL Additional 37472 (1) [165a] and London, Victoria and Albert Museum 661 [319a). Likely removed from the "Eadwine Psalter" in the early 17c, before its donation to Trinity College by Thomas Nevile (1597-1615). (See description of Eadwine Psalter [85) for history of that codex.) All four illustrated prefatory leaves are recorded in the Ottley Sale Catalogue (1838) for 11 May, these two Morgan leaves as nos. 130 and 133; Lot 130 [M. 724] sold to Tindall for £1, acquired by Robert Stayner Holford (1808-1892), and sold in the Sir George Lindsay Holford Sale (Holford Sale Catalogue [London, 1927]) at Sotheby's London, 12 July 1927 as lot 48 to Bernard Quaritch, bookseller, and purchased for the Pierpont Morgan Library in 1927, acceded as M. 724; Lot 133 [M. 521) was sold at the Ottley Sale to Payne and Foss, bookseller, for £2.8s, sold in the William and Thomas Bateman Sale (Bateman Sale Catalogue 1893), at Sotheby's London, 29 May 1893, as lot 1152 to Bernard Quaritch, purchased in 1911 through Joseph Martini for the Pierpont Morgan Library. In a letter of 21 January 1911 to Belle da Costa Greene, Director of the Pierpont Morgan, Martini indicates that he left one of the leaves with John Pierpont Morgan for examination, quoting a sale price of £400. A subsequent letter from Morgan to Martini includes a receipt 'for an illuminated leaf divided into 48 compartments (English work of the XIth century), probably preceding a Psalter or an Evangelium: citing a price of $1,500, with payment noted as received by Martini (Kauffmann 1975: 95; and see Pierpont Morgan internal files on Corsair: Pierpont Morgan Online Catalogue).