‡ Cutting from an 'Atlantic' Bible, with remnant of a large interlace initial in Carolingian style, in Latin, manuscript on parchment [Italy, c. 1080]

Long and thin strip, cut and reused to strengthen board attachment to book block in a later binding, here with remains of double column of 8 lines of a good Romanesque bookhand with a tongued final 'e' and a dotted 'y', approximately two-thirds of an initial 'V' (opening Verbum domini, quod factum est ..., the opening of Joel) enclosing an angular swirl of geometric decoration, the initial once bright red but now oxidised to silver, stains, tears to edges and other damage concomitant with recovery from a binding, overall fair condition, 307 by 57mm.

From the stock of Bernard Rosenthal (1920-2017), then Quaritch, cat. 1147 (1991), no. 10.

The remains of the initial here, with its geometric infill, hark back to early Carolingian models so closely as to suggest that the artist here was copying directly from a Tours Bible (compare, for example, the initial 'V' on a fragment of a Tours Bible now in the Getty Museum in Los Angeles: F. Mütherich, 'Die touronische Bibel von St. Maximin in Trier', in a facsimile volume in 2019, then reprinted in Studies in Carolingian Manuscript Illumination, 2004, fig. 1 on p. 353).

‡: A double dagger (‡) indicates that the lot is being sold whilst subject to temporary importation and that VAT is due at the reduced rate (5%) if the lot remains in the UK.