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Vita di Santa Chiara vergine
Title:Vita di Santa Chiara vergine.
Language: Italian.
Origin: Florence, Italy, 1496.
Description: Illuminated manuscript on parchment. 39 leaves. 21 x 13 cm. Single column of 19 lines. Textblock: 14 x 8.5 cm.
Binding: Contemporary Italian blind-tooled goatskin, with two metal clasps.
Comments: Written in a fine humanist script with brown and red inks, lightly ruled. The author, Ugolino Verino, personally wrote out Vita di Santa Chiara vergine, and presented it to the sisters at the Convento di Santa Chiara Novella in Florence in 1496. The text is a rare vernacular Italian biography of St. Clare of Assisi (1194-1253), follower of St. Francis and founder of the Franciscan convents of the “Poor Clares.” Verino’s book was cited in Lorenzo Bartolozzi’s 16th-century biography of the author (Florence, Codex Ricciardiano 910), but prior to the modern rediscovery of this manuscript, the text was believed to have been lost. An edition was printed by the Ashendene Press in 1921.
Decoration: Folio 1r has gilt initial on red and blue, borders of flowers and gold in left margin and at bottom of the page, painted roundel with image of St. Clare.
Provenance:(1) Convento di Santa Chiara Novella, Florence 1496-1808. (2) Lieutenant Lord George John Warren Vernon of Sudbury, Sotheby's London, 12 June 1918, lot 513. (3) Charles Harry St. John Hornby, 1918 to 16 September 1946. (4) Major John Roland Abbey (1896-1969), 1946 to 25 March 1975, Sotheby’s London, lot 2971. (5) Harry Levinson, California, 1975 to 1986.
Bibliography:
Charles Harry St. John Hornby, ed., Ugolino Verino, Vita di Santa Chiara vergine. Chelsea: Ashendene Press, 1921.
Walter W. Seton, “The Italian Version of the Legend of Saint Clare by the Florentine Ugolino Verino,” Archivum Franciscanum Historicum XII (1919), 595-59.
J. J. G. Alexander and A. C. de la Mare, The Italian Manuscripts in the Library of Major J. R. Abbey. London: Faber and Faber, 1969, 70-71, fig. 32a.
Colin Franklin, The Ashendene Press. Dallas: Bridwell Library, 1986, pp.133-38; p.240.
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Saint Clare, Detail, f.1r.
Saint Clare, Detail, f. 1r.
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