Bible for A King

042

Some missing illuminations from the pages of an ornately illustrated Bible that once belonged to a medieval king have been returned to their original setting, thanks to the largesse of London industrialist and manuscript collector J. Paul Getty.

The history of this expressively illustrated Bible is for the most part shrouded in mystery. What is known of its peregrinations has been marked by tragedy and misfortune.

The first time we hear of it is in the 13th century, when it was in the possession of Manfred, king of Sicily. Whether it was created for Manfred or was somehow acquired by him, we do not know. Nor do we know the identity of the eminently talented, presumably southern Italian artist whose creation it was, nor even precisely when he worked.

In any event, Manfred was slain by Charles of Anjou in 1266 in a bid for the Sicilian throne. Manfred’s followers then turned to Conradin of Hohenstaufen, Manfred’s nephew and heir to the Holy Roman Empire, to lead them. Manfred’s Bible was presented to Conradin at his Bavarian court as an inducement to assert his uncle’s claim to the Sicilian throne. Conradin was then 14 years of age. Two years later, in 1268, Conradin fearlessly crossed the Alps and entered Rome in an attempt to unify the Holy Roman Empire. But shortly after he reached Rome, French forces detained him, tried and convicted him as an imposter to the throne and later, in Naples, beheaded him.

Although Conradin possessed the Bible for only two years, it is his name that was attached to it. It is known as the Conradin Bible.

What happened to the Conradin Bible when Conradin died, no one knows. Indeed, its where-abouts for nearly 600 years remain a mystery.

In 1835, the Conradin Bible surfaced in France in the possession of an antiquarian named Auguste, Comte de Bastard d’Estang. Apparently a previous owner had practiced the appalling habit, common in the 18th and 19th centuries, of excising decorated capital letters, miniatures and even whole pages from the manuscript. In this fashion, the owner had wrenched 55 of the illuminations from their original context, plus all of the unillustrated pages from the Old Testament preceding the Book of Daniel. In this truncated form, the Conradin Bible came into the possession of Comte Bastard d’Estang. Beside the missing illuminations and pages, the remaining 164 pages had been rebound in a haphazard sequence.

In 1905 Henry Walters acquired the Conradin Bible for his art collection that formed the basis of the Walters Art Gallery in Baltimore, Maryland. It has been a star of the Walters Gallery ever since its founding in 1904. In 1953, the Walters Gallery purchased five of the 55 missing cuttings from the estate of a Londoner. Fifty illuminations remained at large. Then in 1982, 30 of the 50 missing illuminations were put up for auction at Sotheby’s in London by an anonymous owner. Michael Ward, a New York dealer, purchased six of the 30 illuminations. He prevailed upon a fellow buyer to sell back 12 additional illuminations from the Bible and offered the group of 18 illuminations to the Walters Gallery for $68,000.

Unfortunately, because of previous commitments in its acquisitions program, the Walters Gallery did not have the funds to purchase the stray illuminations, nor could a donor be found. A November, 1984, article by Jeffrey Schaire in Arts and Antiquities lamented the narrowly missed chance at restoring the wayward illuminations pages to the codex in Baltimore. This article somehow came to the attention of J. Paul Getty II in London. Getty, who possesses one of the finest collections of manuscripts in the world, is known for his magnanimous efforts to restore works of art to their rightful places. Rather than acquiring the illuminations for his own collection, Getty, in typically quiet British 044fashion, had his London agent purchase the lot of 18 and present them to the Walters Gallery. The gift arrived in Baltimore in December, 1984, and was put on temporary display.

But no further communication from the donor has been received. Lillian Randall, research curator of manuscripts and rare books at the Walters Gallery, believes Getty acted on his conviction that the 18 illuminations rightfully belong with the rest of the Bible. Perhaps Getty saw the gift as an excellent opportunity to rectify the despicable practice legitimized by no less a figure than the great 19th-century art historian Ruskin, of chopping up books for private collections.

The manuscript known as the Conradin Bible is quite large, with vellum (calfskin) pages measuring 14.5 by 9.75 inches. The most extraordinary artistic feature of the Conradin Bible is the overall layout of the illustrated pages. The margins are exceptionally wide for an illuminated Bible of this period. The illuminations, which consist of decorated capital letters and marginal miniatures, are organized around the Latin text in boldly imaginative and eccentric designs. Black borders sharply delineate the contours of the illuminations. These crisp, black borders, incidentally, may have encouraged the earlier owner to snip out the illuminations with his scissors.

The illuminations in the Conradin Bible, although the work of an artist active in southern Italy in the 13th century, reflect certain Byzantine influences. For example the physiognomy of the prophets and apostles is similar to facial types in Byzantine paintings and mosaics. And throughout the illuminations the artist has made use of large gold discs as backgrounds to the figures and scenes. These gold discs are reminiscent of the circular gold stones used in the background of Byzantine mosaics. The master artist of the Conradin Bible, who probably worked on the Bible in southern Italy, may have originally been trained in the techniques of Byzantine mosaic art.

Most of the bold illuminations adorn capital letters at the beginning of important sections of the Bible. But a substantial number of illuminations are miniatures filling up the margins around the text. The subjects of the illuminations range from the Old to the New Testament, King David playing the harp, the lives of the prophets, the Virgin and Child, and the apostles. Subjects also include the caprices of fabulous beasts. Each scene appears against a cobalt blue background studded with starry white clusters connected by fine lines that give the impression of fine embroidery.

A page from the Book of Ezekiel appears above. Bold, black scalloped lines clearly outline the miniature of Ezekiel and his vision, as well as the large, ornamented initial letters “H” and “E.”

The miniature is composed of two parts. The first, larger part—beneath and to the right of the right column of text—portrays Ezekiel’s wondrous vision of “a wheel within a wheel…and the wheels were full of eyes round about…and every one [of the wheels] had four faces: the first face was the face of the cherub, and the second face was the face of a man, and the third the face of a lion, and the fourth the face of an eagle” (Ezekiel 10:10–12, 14). In the manuscript illumination, Ezekiel, strikingly clad in green and yellow, kneels with outstretched arms in a field of blue. Above the prophet the artist has represented Ezekiel’s vision as a wheel within a wheel rimmed by the faces of the four visionary creatures. Three brilliantly colored wings encircle the vision, creating the impression of spinning motion. The artist has drawn a veil of wavy white lines about the creatures’ faces. Ezekiel and the heads of the four creatures reappear in the ornamented initial “E.” Ezekiel was one of the Jews carried captive in 597 B.C. to Mesopotamia, where he had his vision. Later he became a prophet to Israel.

The second part of the miniature is appended like a tail to the first: It curls up beneath the left column of text, ending in the head of a green monster with a gold dot placed just beyond its snout. Gold dots, or discs, recur inside the border and in the ornamented initials of the text.

Another illumination from the Conradin Bible, an ornamented capital “B,” appears at the beginning of this article. In this 3.5-inch-square excised segment, David, depicted as a mature king with crown and beard, sits in the lower loop of the first letter of the first word of the Latin text of Psalm 1, which begins “Beatus vir…” [Blessed is the man…]. King David plucks the strings of a psaltery, an ancient stringed instrument with a sounding box. The choice of David as the opening subject for the Book of Psalms recalls the high esteem the Bible accords to the “sweet psalmist of Israel” (2 Samuel 23:1). Tradition ascribes over half the psalms to David.

But what of the Conradin Bible’s remaining 32 illuminations, 12 of which are said to be in the hands of a “private collector” or dealer, as well as the remainder still unaccounted for? The mystery is not yet over. As curator Randall points out, additional illuminations seem to turn up at 30-year intervals. In 1953 five of the fragments appeared in Baltimore, and in 1984 the additional 18 illuminations arrived. Will we have to wait another 30 years until the present owner and a suitable donor come forward to return the abducted offspring to the maternal codex?

Some missing illuminations from the pages of an ornately illustrated Bible that once belonged to a medieval king have been returned to their original setting, thanks to the largesse of London industrialist and manuscript collector J. Paul Getty. The history of this expressively illustrated Bible is for the most part shrouded in mystery. What is known of its peregrinations has been marked by tragedy and misfortune. The first time we hear of it is in the 13th century, when it was in the possession of Manfred, king of Sicily. Whether it was created for Manfred or was somehow acquired […]