Central Italian neumes
A partial leaf from an Antiphonal, in Latin, manuscript on vellum [Italy, c.1150]
A Romanesque fragment from the Feast of St Martin.

c.210 x 152mm, a partial leaf, 8 lines remaining written in a rounded Romanesque book script of medium quality, headings and rubrics in a fine uncial, 7 lines of Central Italian neumes, 5 initials in bright red with some flourishing (recovered from use as a flyleaf, with two vertical creases and some holes, some staining). Bound in grey buckram at the Quaritch bindery.

Provenance:
(1) H. P. Kraus, Text manuscripts from the Middle Ages to the XVIII century: for the most part from the Giuseppe Martini collection, 189 (1958), no 192.

(2) Sotheby’s 21 June 1994, lot 4c.

(3) Schøyen Collection, MS 1853.

Text and music:
The text is for the Feast of St Martin, opening with the rubric 'In Sancti Martini Episcopi' and ending with the antiphon 'Ego signo [crucis non clipeo]'. The notation, with the F-line in red and the C-line in yellow, was previously described as Beneventan. There is some academic disagreement on the matter, but whereas older scholarship tended to group together this type of notation, which was certainly more widely used than the script hand, as Beneventan, more accurate current scholarship distinguishes between notation appearing on manuscripts written in southern Italy in Beneventan script, and similar notation used elsewhere.

Christie's would like to thank Dr Giulio Minniti for bringing to our attention the latest scholarship on Beneventan notation.