Compilatio historiarum

Accession number: 
MS M.158
Title: 
Compilatio historiarum
Created: 
Basel, Switzerland, ca. 1476.
Binding: 
French 18th-century red morocco.
Credit: 
Purchased by J. Pierpont Morgan (1837-1913) in 1902.
Description: 
23 leaves (2 columns, variable number of lines), bound : paper, ill. ; 370 x 280 mm
Provenance: 
Cardinal Loménie de Brienne Collection; his sale (Paris, Mar. 12, 1792, I, p. 4-5, no.4) to Belin; Marquess of Blandford Collection (Bibliotheca Blandfordiensis 1813, I, p.4; not traced in 1819 sale); Frederick Perkins sale (London, 1889, no. 1002) to Quaritch; William Morris (1834-1896); Richard Bennett (1844-1900; purchased from Morris's estate, 1897); Catalogue of manuscripts and early printed books from the libraries of William Morris, Richard Bennett, Bertram, fourth Earl of Ashburnham, and other sources, no. 224; purchased by J. Pierpont Morgan (1837-1913) with the Bennett Collection in 1902; J.P. Morgan (1867-1943).
Notes: 

Ms; written, decorated, and illustrated in Basel, Switzerland, ca. 1476.
Decoration: 1 outline ink drawing of Adam and Eve (fol. 1v) painted in watercolor in semi-circle; 2 drawings in red ink of Noah's Ark; 4 painted drawings of cities (Babel, Nineveh, Jerusalem, Rome); 1 half-page heavily painted drawing of the seven-armed candelabra of Moses; 1 painted drawing and diagram of the 3 nations of Israel; 1 colored plan of Jerusalem; various sketches of objects, locations and building in brown ink colored in light yellow wash (fol. 19v-20); 5 roundels with drawings colored in wash.
Artist: ink drawing on fol. 1v attributed by Meta Harrsen (in Central European manuscripts in the Pierpont Morgan Library) to the Master of the Richel Speculum, whom she also names as the artist of the woodcuts with which this manuscript is bound.
Scribe: unknown scribe who also provided Latin commentary on the proof impressions of the woodcuts from Richel's printing of the Speculum humanae salvationis with which this manuscript is bound.

Script: 
cursive script
Language: 
Latin
Century: 
Classification: