For over two hundred years this first volume, containing Books I to XIV of the Antiquities of the Jews, has been in the Bibliothèque Nationale. It is bound in yellow morocco, and bears the arms of Louis XV. The second volume was considered lost. In 1903 the English collector, Mr. Henry Yates Thompson, purchased the missing copy in London, at a sale at Sotheby’s. This contained Books XV to XX of the Antiquities of the Jews and Books I to VII of the War of the Jews; but it was imperfect in that a dozen pages of miniatures had been cut out. Two years later, Sir George Warner discovered ten of these filched leaves in an album of miniatures that at some time had been presented to Queen Victoria, and were in her collection at Windsor Castle.
As soon as Mr. Thompson heard of this discovery, he begged King Edward VII to accept his volume, in order that the leaves might be combined. The English monarch received the gift with the understanding that he, in turn, might present the restored manuscript to the President of the French Republic. This gracious act was accomplished on March 4, 1906, and now the two volumes rest side by side in the Bibliothèque Nationale, reunited for all time after their long separation. If books possess personalities, surely no international romance ever offered greater material for the novelist’s imagination!
Now our pilgrimage takes us from Paris to Venice, to study that priceless treasure of the Library of San Marco, the Grimani Breviary, the gem of the Flemish School (which should properly be called “Netherlandish”). This style overlapped, distinctly, into Germany and France, and further complicated any certainty of identification by the fact that the number of Netherlandish illuminators was large, and they scattered themselves over Europe, practising their art and style in France, Germany, and Italy. They all worked with the same minute care, and it is practically impossible to identify absolutely the work even of the most famous artists. There has always been a question whether the chief glory of the Grimani Breviary belonged to Hans Memling or to Gerard Van-der-Meire, but from a study of the comparative claims the Memling enthusiasts would seem to have the better of the argument.
Internal and external evidence place the date of the execution of the Grimani Breviary at 1478 to 1489,—ten years being required for its completion. It is believed that the commission was given by Pope Sixtus IV. The Pontiff, however, died before the volume was finished, and it was left in the hands of one of the artists engaged upon it. Antonello di Messina purchased it from this artist, who is supposed to have been Hans Memling, and brought it to Venice, where he sold it for the sum of 500 ducats to Cardinal Domenico Grimani, whose name it bears.
GRIMANI BREVIARY. Flemish, 15th Century
La Vie au Mois de Janvier
(Biblioteca San Marco, Venice. 10 × 9 inches)
This Cardinal Grimani was a man noted not only for his exemplary piety but also as a literary man of high repute, and a collector of rare judgment. When he died, the Breviary was bequeathed to his nephew, Marino Grimani, Patriarch of Aquileia, on the condition that at his death the precious manuscript should become the property of the Venetian Republic. Marino carried the Breviary with him to Rome, where it remained until his death in 1546. In spite of his precautions, however, this and several other valuable objects would have been irretrievably lost had not Giovanni Grimani, Marino’s successor as Patriarch at Aquileia, searched for it, and finally recovered it at great cost to himself.