Hamilton Bible
The Hamilton Bible is an illuminated Bible manuscript of the 14th century that was created in Naples . It is kept under the signature ms 78 E 3 ( Ham. 85 ) in the Berlin Kupferstichkabinett .
description
The Bible is one volume and contains the complete Latin text of the Old and New Testaments , only Ezra 3 and 4 are missing. In the colophon , Magister Johannes de Ravenna appears as scribe.
The dimensions of the Hamilton Bible are 375 × 265 millimeters, it has 497 sheets, made of parchment , there are a total of 40 collection miniatures, 4 full-page tableaus and 26 miniatures on the Apocalypse as well as 92 initials. The manuscript is complete and in a very good state of preservation. The red, velvety cover of the book has four suns in the corners, but only their rays have survived; in the middle there was probably a circular medallion.
The two-column Bible text is written in black ink, the initials of the pictures are almost square. The background of the initials is mostly gold-plated or blue with white ornaments. There is a lot of life in the letter itself, either the initial is inhabited by someone, e.g. B. the writing evangelist John the fol. 400r or in the initial is a scene that appears in the Bible text, e.g. B. Jeremiah complaining before the burning city of Jerusalem, fol. 60v. The letters themselves are either in pink, fol. 60v, pink with green border, fol. 400r, pink with a blue border, fol. 297v or blue with different colored borders, fol. 128v. The collection miniatures are rectangular, outlined either with red, blue, orange, green or pink, as on fol. 106v and fol. 74v can be seen.
Notable Pages from the Hamilton Bible
Fol. 1: Letter from Jerome to Paulinus von Nola and Jerome prologue
Fol. 4: Genesis - representation of the creation story in 16 rectangular fields
Fol. 455 - 464: Apocalypse - very extensive and narrative
Dating
The Hamilton Bible or Berlin Bible is dated by Andreas Bräm to around 1355, Schmitt assumes it was made around 1350, and the Bible is dated from 1343 to 1345 by Fleck. Due to the political difficulties Johanna I had between the death of her father Robert in 1343 and the peace of 1352, it can be assumed that she hardly ever commissioned artists during this time. The Anjou Bible, dated 1340–1343 or around 1350, is not as magnificent and monumental as the Hamilton Bible, it is classified before the Hamilton Bible. For the Vienna Bible, the years around 1340 and 1360 are available as a date, but in summary it should be noted that the significant group of the Neapolitan Bibles (Hamilton Bible, Anjou Bible and Vienna Bible) originate from an artist's studio and were in the years between 1340 and should have originated in 1360.
Provenance of the Bible
The client was most likely Queen Joan of Anjou for Guillaume II. Roger de Beaufort or for his brother, Pope Clement VI. (reigned 1342-1352), as the coat of arms of Guillaume II. Roger de Beaufort, with whom Joan of Anjou was in contact, repeatedly appears on the pages of the Bible. The Hamilton Bible is shown in Raphael's portrait of Pope Leo X (1475-1521) with the cardinals Giulio de 'Medici and Luigi de' Rossi. How the Bible came into the possession of Pope Leo X (reigned 1513-1521) and how it came from Pope Clement VI. to Pope Leo X, is not known. The later Pope Julius II (ruled 1503-1513) rearranged the Gothic book collection in Avignon (during the stay of his uncle Pope Sixtus IV , ruled 1471-1484). There is evidence that the popes transported books from the book collections from Avignon to Rome, it is possible that the Hamilton Bible came to Rome in this way.
The further path of the Bible cannot be reconstructed. It is known that the Hamilton Bible ended up in the collection of the Dukes Hamilton, who collected manuscripts for many centuries. It is not known where and when the Hamilton Bible was acquired and incorporated into the collection. The most important collector of the Hamilton family was the bibliophile Alexander Douglas (1767-1852), who later became the 10th Duke of Hamilton, who significantly expanded the collection through purchases in Italy, France and Russia. The grandson of the tenth duke, however, had such high debts that the collection had to be sold. In 1884 the Prussian Kupferstichkabinett bought 663 of the 692 manuscripts. Since then, the Bible with the signature ms 78 E 3 has been in the Prussian Kupferstichkabinett in Berlin.
Allocation of the Bible to the Neapolitan illumination of the 14th century
The leading illuminator of Naples in the 14th century was Cristophoro Orimina , who created the Anjou Bible or Alfie Bible between 1340 and 1343. Orimina's style stands out for its finely painted, monumental figures with soft modeling. Landscapes play a subordinate role, rugged rock formations, delicate and detailed architectures dominate, cities are represented formulaically. The coloring of the manuscripts from Orimina's hand is almost identical. Blue, green, orange, salmon red, yellow-gray and blue-gray for the earth dominate the works. An orange-colored cornice surrounds some miniatures (fol. 6r / fol. 367).
Cristophoro Orimina's style developed from the Anjou Bible (around 1340) to the Hamilton Bible and the Planisio Bible (beginning of the 1960s), from a painter of initials to a cycle painter. So that individual images can be brought together, the painter has to combine several miniatures, Orimina did this in the Hamilton and Planisio Bibles, whereby the individual images are brought into a narrative context. This is achieved through a vertical or horizontal structure of the miniatures and their scenes. Thus, in the Hamilton Bible, the collective miniatures appear as independent, scenically complete and consecutive image fields that are related to one another in a formal and thematic context. An increase in the summary and bracketing of the narrative units is achieved in the Planisio Bible.
literature
- Wolfgang Augustyn, On the origin and style of the Latin Hamilton Psalter in the Berlin Kupferstichkabinett (78 A5) , in: Jahrbuch der Berliner Museen, Vol. 31, 1989, pp. 107–126.
- Helmut Boese, The Latin Manuscripts of the Hamilton Collection in Berlin , Wiesbaden 1966, pp. 45–47 ( digitized from manuscripta mediaevalia )
- Andreas Bräm, Neapolitan Picture Bibles of the Trecento , Volume I and Volume II, Wiesbaden 2007.
- Cathleen A. Fleck, Patronage, Art and the Anjou Bible in Angevin Naples (1266-1352) , in: Lieve Watteeuw / Jan Van der Stock, The Anjou Bible. A Royal Manuscript revealed, Naples 1340, Paris / Leuven / Walpole, 2010, pp. 37-51.
- Christine Havice, The Marginal Miniatures in the Hamilton Psalter (Kupferstichkabinett 78.A.9), in: Jahrbuch der Berliner Museen, Vol. 26, 1984, pp. 79–142.
- Hermann Julius Hermann, The Italian Manuscripts of the Dugento and Trecento. Part 3: Neapolitan and Tuscan manuscripts of the second half of the 14th century (descriptive list of illuminated manuscripts in Austria), in: Julius Schlosser / Hermann Julius Hermann (ed.), Volume V., The Illuminated Manuscripts and Incunabula of the National Library in Vienna , Leipzig 1930.
- Martin Roland, Apocalypse cycle of a Neapolitan Bible , in: Alpha & Omega: Stories from the End and Beginning of the World, Vienna 2000, pp. 186–193.
- Paul Wescher, descriptive directory of the miniatures, manuscripts and single sheets of the Kupferstichkabinett of the Staatliche Museen Berlin , Leipzig 1931.
Web links
- Alexandra Gerrer, Hamilton Bible, seminar paper University of Vienna, summer semester 2010, Hamilton Bible (PDF; 96 kB).
- Fol 4. (Genesis of the Hamilton Bible) - Bibelwissenschaft.de
- Example Apocalypse - cover sheet book by Andreas Bräm - Apocalypse
