Medieval and Renaissance Manuscripts in New Zealand Collections.

Cloth, gilt cover device, 4to, 25 cm, 200 pp, 198 ills (24 in colour). From the blurb: "This is the first comprehensive catalogue and visual record of the manuscripts, produced during the Middle Ages and Renaissance, which are now in public and private collections in New Zealand. It also represents the final stage of a detailed survey of illuminated books in Australian and New Zealand collections initiated by Margaret Manion and Vera Vines a decade ago, and it forms a sequel to Medieval and Renaissance Illuminated Manuscripts in Australian Collections, published by Thames and Hudson in 1984. Over 180 entries describe complete books or fragments, with Christopher de Hamel drawing special attention to text and provenance and to the ways in which these ancient European manuscripts came to rest in the Antipodes. Brief histories of the formation of the public collections and of the role of their significant donors - men such as George Grey and Henry Shaw in Auckland, A.H. Reed in Dunedin, and Alexander Turnbull and John Ilott in Wellington - introduce the entries, which are grouped under particular libraries and museums. Examples of late Byzantine, English, French, Netherlandish, German, Bohemian and Italian illumination are liberally reproduced in colour and black-and-white, and pen-flourished and painted initials, decorated borders and miniatures are all located within their specific art-historical contexts. Manuscripts of outstanding quality include a twelfth-century illuminated copy of De Musica by Boethius, which once belonged to the monastic library of Christ College, Canterbury, and a two-volume missal, with an unusually detailed series of miniatures, executed for Charles de Neufchâtel, Archbishop of Besançon (c. 1463). This important work of scholarship will be invaluable, not only to art historians, textual scholars and palaeographers, but to all those interested in the varied relationships between text, image and decoration in the history of the hand-crafted book." Darkened area to foot of front board, otherwise Near Very Good. …