The Pierpont Morgan Library, M. 766
This English manuscript of the early fifteenth century has seventy-one leaves on vellum, 32.5 × 24 cm., of which two are blank. There are 192 pen drawings of very primitive character, without shading and with very little rendering of the ground or landscape. The costumes are partly imagined and partly those of the period, with elaborate attention to such details as buttons and nail-heads and the joints of armor (figs. II-22, 23, 24, 25, 26). Some of the scenes differ strongly in their iconography from other Speculum manuscripts, and as a result of the lack of perspective, the Christ child's cradle is floating in the air. There is no suggestion of a manger or shelter of any kind (fig. II-23). The drawings are in the same ink as the text which suggests that they were sketched by the scribe himself.
On folio 1 verso is written "Officium de Sancto Johanne de Bridlyntona" in a script very like that of the text. This Johannes was a regular prior of Bridlington in the County of York; he had studied at Oxford and was canonized in 1401. He was worshipped as a saint in Bridlington and its environs within a few years after his death in 1379.[26]
II-24.
b. Daniel Destroys Bel and Kills the Lion,
Chapter XIII, fol. 34 verso.
II-25.
d. King Ammon Deals Dishonestly with David's Messengers.
Chapter XXI, fol. 43 recto.
II-26.
a. Christ Bearing his Cross.
Chapter XXII, fol. 43 verso.
b. Isaac Carrying the Wood for his Immolation.
Chapter XXII, fol. 43 verso.