Copy number: C-121(1)

Wanting the blank leaf [a1].

Binding: Contemporary (1470s) Paduan reddish-brown goatskin over wooden boards bevelled inwards; edges of the boards and spine covered with early nineteenth-century black leather. Wanting four clasps (three nails in a triangle) hinging on the upper cover. Formerly chained: staple mark of a hasp, 75 mm long, three large nails, on the lower edge of the lower cover c.65 mm in from the spine. Blind-tooled with five-line frames, enclosing a basketwork border. The central panel contains a double five-line lozenge, enclosing a border of continuous knot-work circles around rosettes (similar to Auct. N 4.22 = S‑341(1)), joined by seven-line diagonals to the corners of the panel. An interlaced knot-work repeated three times in a vertical line in the centre. Groups of small stars around a larger one, both inside and outside the lozenge. Yellow edges. Double yellow diagonal headbands. Sewn on four (split?) bands secured in grooves on the outside of the covers. One original parchment endleaf at the back. Nineteenth-century marbled pastedowns. The ‘five star shop'; for this and other bindings from the same shop see A. Hobson, ‘Bookbinding in Padua in the Fifteenth Century', Incunabula, ed. Davies, 389-420, at p. 399, fig. 6.

Size: 302 × 205 × 45 mm.

Size of leaf: 291 × 202 mm.

On [a2r] a six-line north Italian (probably Paduan) initial is supplied in gold with white vine-leaf decoration defined in blue, red, and green, extending into the inner margin with some gold-dotting, ascribed to ‘Bologna(?)' by Pächt and Alexander II, 114 no. pr. 125, but to Padua by A. C. de la Mare in an oral communication to Anthony Hobson. Other initials are supplied in red and blue.

Provenance: James Ludovic Lindsay (1847-1913), 26th Earl of Crawford and 9th Earl of Balcarres; see sale (Sotheby's, 13 June 1887), lot 639. Purchased in 1887 from Charles Weatherby Reynell (1798-1892) for £4. 0. 0 out of the donation of £100 from Sir William Reynell Anson, Warden of All Souls (1843-1914).

SHELFMARK: Auct. Q sup. 1.27.

Copy number: C-121(2)

Not in Sheppard.

Bound with A‑168(5); see there for details of binding and provenance.

Leaf [g9] only.

Size of fragment: 313 × 210 mm.

A four-line initial ‘A' is supplied in red on the verso.

SHELFMARK: Gibson 403(10).