The McCarthy Collection, Volume I (Hardcover)

Gaudenz Freuler

ISBN 10: 1912168073 / ISBN 13: 9781912168071

Published by Ad Ilissum, London, 2018

About this Item

Hardcover. This handsomely produced publication is the first of a three-volume set exploring an outstanding collection of leaves and miniatures from medieval manuscripts. Brimming with beautiful illustrations, this welcome contribution to medieval scholarship covers a period from the late ninth to the late fifteenth centuries and incorporates new discoveries in this developing field. Assembled in relatively recent years, The McCarthy Collection stands in line with many similar anthologies of miniatures in private or public hands. By contrast, the collection has not limited its focus on one school of European illumination but aims to present a panorama of the sophisticated art called, to use Dante's words, 'illumination' (quell'arte ch'alluminar chiamata e in Parisi; Purgatorio, XI, 78-80). Given the wealth of The McCarthy Collection, it was decided to document this substantial overview of European illumination in two books. The present volume is dedicated to the holdings of single leaves and cuttings from medieval Italian manuscripts from the late ninth to the mid-fifteenth centuries and includes several important and rare Byzantine items described by Georgi Parpulov. Documenting for the first time this important and hitherto unknown collection, this lavishly illustrated book incorporates a wide range of comparative material and introduces new research on many of the leaves and their parent volumes, constituting a notable contribution to the scholarship of late medieval Italian illumination. Reflecting their historical and artistic status within medieval Italian illumination, the core of the miniatures of the McCarthy collection belongs to the most important centers of book production in Italy: Bologna and its surrounding region, Umbria, and Tuscany. The regions are all represented with very interesting examples, among them some extraordinary masterpieces. Among other developments, the rich holdings of late thirteenth and early fourteenth century illumination in the collection demonstrate the propagation of the new painting evolved by Giotto. Robert McCarthy's passion for the medieval and early Gothic world is also apparent in his holdings of English and French illuminations, discussed in a second volume by Peter Kidd (forthcoming 2019). This handsome book is the first of a two volume set exploring an outstanding collection of leaves and miniatures from medieval manuscripts. Brimming with beautiful illustrations, this welcome contribution to medieval scholarship covers a period from the late 9th to the late 15th centuries and incorporates new discoveries in this growing field. Shipping may be from our Sydney, NSW warehouse or from our UK or US warehouse, depending on stock availability.

Seller Inventory # 9781912168071

Bibliographic Details

• Title: The McCarthy Collection, Volume I (Hardcover)
• Publisher: Ad Ilissum, London
• Publication Date: 2018
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 1912168073
• ISBN 13: 9781912168071
• Binding: Hardcover
• Condition: new

About this title

Synopsis

This handsomely produced publication is the first of a two volume set exploring an outstanding collection of leaves and miniatures from medieval manuscripts. Brimming with beautiful illustrations, this welcome contribution to medieval scholarship covers a period from the late 9th to the late 15th centuries and incorporates new discoveries in this still growing field. The turbulent times when Napoleon’s troops were sweeping over Europe under the banner of secularization, seeking to suppress ecclesiastical influence within the sphere of political power, had disastrous consequences especially for ecclesiastical libraries, which were broken up and looted. The Italian religious houses had their cultural treasures destroyed or moved out of context and spread all over the world to satisfy a growing market for medieval art. These fatal years (1796–99) coincide with a major interest in early Italian painting, when French and English connoisseurs joined their Italian colleagues in a systematic study of early Italian art, producing fundamental studies on the subject. Essentially the deplorable practice of breaking up manuscripts and liturgical books was not all that different from the inglorious process of dismembering giant medieval altarpieces, whose single pieces were made available to a growing market and, consequently, dispersed among different collections. Thus, in the present day, one of the major tasks of the art historian is the attempt to reassemble these fragments and present them in virtual reconstructions, reconstituting their original context. By doing this, scholars create the foundation for any further art-historical analysis of a work of art. This task is one of the important objectives in cataloguing the present collection. The miniatures and single leaves in the McCarthy collection, which has been formed in the past two or three decades – between 1990 and today – are manifestly the fruit of the destructive, but at the same time a conservational effort. Even though assembled in relatively recent years, the McCarthy collection stands in line with many similar anthologies of miniature in private or public hands. However, by contrast to other similar collections, the McCarthy collection has not limited its focus just on one school of European illumination, the Italian centres of illumination, but aims to present a vast panorama of this sophisticated art, which, to use Dante’s words, was called ‘illumination’ (‘... quell arte ch’alluminar chiamata è in Parisi’; Purgatorio, XI, 79–80). The present volume is dedicated to the holdings of single leaves and miniatures from medieval Italian manuscripts, which cover a period from the late 9th to the late 15th centuries, and are enriched by a few Byzantine items, appropriately included here and discussed by Georgi Parpulov. The focus on late 13th- and early 14th-century illumination in the collection demonstrates McCarthy’s predilection for the medieval and early Gothic world, which also becomes apparent in his holdings of French and German illumination, to be discussed by Peter Kidd in volume II, to be announced shortly.

About the Author

Gaudenz Freuler is professor emeritus, University of Zurich, Switzerland, where he lectured in art history from 1994 to 2014. Besides his numerous publications and his teaching, he has co-curated several exhibitions in Italy and America. Since the 1990s he has concentrated especially on manuscript illumination, producing notably (with Ada Labriola and Cristina De Benedictis) La miniatura senese 1270–1420 and the book in two volumes of an important Milanese private collection, Italian Miniatures from the Twelfth to the Sixteenth Centuries. 

Georgi Parpulov studied history at the University of Sofia and art history at the University of Chicago. He has taught at the University of Oxford, has undertaken curatorial work at the Walters Art Museum and the British Museum, and has written Toward a History of Byzantine Psalters.