Beschreibung:

Leaf from a Noted Breviary with a very large white-vine initial, in Latin, manuscript on parchment [Germany, eleventh century (probably first half)] Single leaf, with 30 long lines in two sizes of a good German Romanesque bookhand, with e with a protruding tongue, using the et-ligature integrally within words, the smaller script with music with hairline thin neumes set above the lines, rubrics and initials in red, some capitals touched in red (one M containing three small red dots), one half-page white-vine initial D in split bands with interlace sections, the central compartment and the curl of the tail filled with sprouts of foliage, later scrawls to recto from reuse on accounts of 1531, darkening and discoloured on recto, and with small tears and spots and stains, else fair and presentable condition, 335 by 232mm. The large and elegant script here, with a rectangular aspect to the body of each letter, is notably close to that of a Glossed Psalter of the 990s (now Cologne, Dom Hs. 45: Glaube und Wissen im Mittelalter, 1998, no. 40, pp. 219-24), and the use of the ampersand integrally within words also indicates an early date for the parent codex, firmly within the Romanesque period. The smaller script looks forward instead to innovations of the early Gothic and ensures this is from the eleventh century rather than any earlier. Cuttings of this date on the market rarely have such elaborate and large initials in any condition.