A catalogue of Western manuscripts at the Bodleian Libraries and selected Oxford colleges

MS. Canon. Bibl. Lat. 34

Summary Catalogue no.: 18926

Contents

Physical Description

Form: codex
Support: parchment

Decoration

Fine historiated initials.

Other initials. (Pächt and Alexander ii. 53, pl. V)

Binding

15th century, late, Italian, Florence; wood boards; dark brown leather with blind and gilt strapwork tooling, including palmette and anthemion stamps; four small domed corner-bosses on each cover and two fore-edge clasps with brown leather straps, mostly extant; spine with original blind cross-hatching (quadruple lines) and added (18th-century) gilt roll and labels in red and green leather. Endleaves of parchment cannibalized from a Latin commentary on Persius, ?14th century, Italian. 295–296 × 197–198 × c. 58–60 mm. (book closed).

History

Origin: 12th century, third quarter ; Italian, Florence

Provenance and Acquisition

Matteo Luigi Canonici, 1727–1805

Giuseppe Canonici , -1807

Purchased by the Bodleian in 1817

Record Sources

Summary description abbreviated from the Quarto Catalogue (H. O. Coxe, Catalogi codicum manuscriptorum Bibliothecæ Bodleianæ pars tertia codices Græcos et Latinos Canonicianos complectens, Quarto Catalogues III, 1854). Decoration, localization and date follow Pächt and Alexander (1970). Binding: B. C. Barker-Benfield, Bookbindings of Canonici manuscripts : a survey of early and non-standard bindings, mostly Italian, in the Canonici collection of the Bodleian Library, University of Oxford (Oxford, privately printed, 2020).

Digital Images

Digital Bodleian (1 image of binding from 35mm slides)

Bibliography

    Binding:

    Tammaro de Marinis, La legatura artistica in Italia nei secoli XV e XVI, 3 vols., Florence 1960, III no. 2953 bis, Tav. DXIX (under Naples)
    Anthony Hobson, Humanists and bookbinders: the origins and diffusion of the humanistic bookbinding 1459–1559 …, Cambridge 1989, pp. 24–5 (binding ascribed to a Florentine workshop)

Last Substantive Revision

2020-04: Binding description added.