Beschreibung:

Histoire Ancienne jusqu’à César, or Estoires Rogier, the history of the ancient world, in French, illuminated manuscript on vellum 351 leaves, 324mm. by 224mm., lacking leaves originally numbered 86, 120 and 123, and single leaves after fols.176 and 257, and at least one leaf at end, else complete, collation: i-x8, xi7 [of 8, lacking vi], xii-xv8, xvi6 [of 8, lacking i and v], xvii-xxii8, xxiii7 [of 8, lacking iii], xxiv-xxxii8, xxxiii7 [of 8, lacking iv], xxxiv-xliv8, xlv4 [probably of 8, lacking v, vi-viii lacking or cancelled], with horizontal catchwords and traces of leaf signatures, contemporary foliation in roman numerals in red as far as fol. 95 and continued in a later (perhaps seventeenth-century) hand in black ink taking no account of the missing folios which had evidently already gone by then, later foliation often careless (omitting 127 and 237, for example, and repeating 291 and 344, all followed, however, for convenience, in the present description), double column, 37 lines, second leaf begins “et sen vient”, ruled in pale brown ink, written-space 212mm. by 153mm., written in brown ink in a small and regular rather clubbed lettre bâtarde with a few decorative cadels in upper margins and a few flourishes in lower margins, headings in red, paragraph-marks throughout (many on every page) alternately blue and burnished gold, 2- to 3-line illuminated initials at the start of every chapter throughout (1218 of them, according to the cataloguer in 1889) in burnished gold on blue and red grounds with white tracery, one 4-line initial (fol. 299v), eleven very large illuminated initials with partial borders, the initials 6 to 7 lines high in formal floral designs in red, blue and orange with fine and delicate white tracery all on highly burnished gold grounds, the borders in designs of coloured flowers and leaves with gold ivyleaves on hairline stems, nine-line initial and full illuminated border on the first page with full-length coloured and illuminated baguettes to the left of each column and full border of coloured flowers and acanthus leaves in delicate fluffy designs all infilled with hairline stems with gold ivyleaves, two coats-of-arms, one in the outer margin and the other in the lower margin flanked by wild men and with the helm held by a nimbed angel with multicoloured wings, the arms with virtually contemporary alteration to quarter them with another coat (no doubt when the owner married and tactfully added his wife’s arms), fifty-one miniatures in full colour and liquid gold in rectangular compartments the width of a column (i.e., 67 mm. wide, except for two which extend across the space between the columns, fols. 239v and 346v) varying in height from 11 lines to 23 lines (usually about 16 lines, i.e.90 mm. high), late eighteenth-century binding of French green morocco, gilt, narrow borders of floral designs and Greek key pattern between double rules, spine in compartments gilt, gilt dentelles, orange silk pastedowns and endleaves, gilt edges, red watered silk endleaves, corners slightly bumped