Alphabetical collection of proverbs with historiated initials demonstrating various scripts [manuscript], 1560-1570.

[England], [between 1560 and 1580?]

26 leaves mounted in an album

This is a PRELIMINARY RECORD. It may contain incorrect information. Please email catalog@folger.edu for assistance.
Title devised by Folger staff.

Great Britain -- England.

FAST ACC 272272

Ordered from Sokol Books Ltd., D9478, 2021-05-19, email quote. From dealer's description: "ELIZABETHAN MANUSCRIPT. Collection of ms cadel initials, scripts and proverbs. 1560s-70s. 26 leaves, 37 by 28cms, mounted into C19 album. Ms large historiated initials with floral and vegetal motifs, fantastical creatures, humans and animals, hand coloured, with proverbial sentences in different scripts inc. Secretary, Chancery, Gothic (likely by same hand), borders lined with lighter ink, to reverse of some leaves charming alphabetical calligraphic exercises. Slight age yellowing, light ink spotting, dust and finger marks, repairs to some edges and corners. In C19 album folio, half brown morocco on marbled boards, edges and joints slightly rubbed, spine gilt. Exceptional and very rare example of hand coloured Elizabethan-era calligraphy and cadel initials. The work is made up of the twenty four letters of the Elizabethan alphabet as well as two symbols in pen and ink. In the Elizabethan alphabet the letters ‘u’ and ‘v’ were the same as were ‘i’ and ‘j’. Initials are decorated with numerous and varied designs including floral motifs, leafy sprays, acorns, classical figures including a satyr, dragons, a crowned king, an Elizabethan noblewoman, and animals including bears, a monkey playing a trumpet and birds. The designs are fantastical, rendered in a free-flowing, naïve style, outlined in black ink and coloured with attractive green, grey and brown neutral tones using watercolours. Connecting the designs is complex geometric Celtic-style ornament, coloured in order to evoke a three dimensional effect. This is an example of a cadel initial, or lettre cadeau, a letter created out of knot work and caricatured or grotesque people and other creatures. These initials were most common in the fifteenth century, but continue into the sixteenth with examples like the present. The piece can be dated to the 1560s-70s in part due to ‘P’ (no. 15), ‘oure noble queene’, likely relating to Elizabeth I rather than Mary I and also ‘O’ (no. 14) has an image of an early Elizabethan young woman wearing a small ruff and early form of Spanish farthingale, a bell-shaped hoopskirt, dating from the 60s-70s."

272272