Preferred Citation: Wilson, Adrian, and Joyce Lancaster Wilson. A Medieval Mirror. Berkeley:  University of California Press,  c1984 1984. http://ark.cdlib.org/ark:/13030/ft7v19p1w6/


 
II— Latin Manuscripts of the Speculum

Harvard University, the Houghton Library, Ms. Lat. 121

Written in a small rounded Gothic script in the typical two-column, twenty-five-line format on forty-eight vellum leaves, 23 × 16.5 cm., this manuscript includes forty-five chapters and seventy-five pen and ink drawings in a primitive but lively style (figs. II-16, 17, 18). There are single-line titles over the pictures, but no elaborate initials or illumination. After the first eighteen chapters, blank spaces are left for the miniatures, which were never completed. Those of the early chapters appear to be of Bohemian origin or influence and were done in the late fourteenth century. The manuscript was formerly in the Monastery of San Pedro de Roda in Catalonia and came to Harvard in 1943.[25]

[25] Illuminated and Calligraphic Manuscripts , A Catalogue of an Exhibition, Harvard College Library (Cambridge, 1955), p. 19.


43

figure

II-17.
a. The Annunciation of the Birth of Mary.
b. King Astyages Sees a Marvel in a Dream.
Speculum humanæ salvationis . Chapter III.
Harvard University, The Houghton Library, Ms. Lat. 121, for. 6 recto.

figure

II-18.
a. The Annunciation to the Virgin.
b. God Appears to Moses in the Burning Bush.
Speculum humanæ salvationis , Chapter VII.
Harvard University, The Houghton Library, Ms. Lat. 121, fol. 10 recto.


44

figure

II-19.
a. The Gifts of the Magi.
Speculum humanæ salvationis , Chapter IX.
The Pierpont Morgan Library, M. 385, fol. 11 verso.

figure

II-20.
c. David Kills Goliath.
Speculum humanæ salvationis , Chapter XIII.
The Pierpont Morgan Library, M. 385, fol. 16 recto.


II— Latin Manuscripts of the Speculum
 

Preferred Citation: Wilson, Adrian, and Joyce Lancaster Wilson. A Medieval Mirror. Berkeley:  University of California Press,  c1984 1984. http://ark.cdlib.org/ark:/13030/ft7v19p1w6/