{"product_id":"portable-breviary-and-psalter-for-roman-use","title":"PORTABLE BREVIARY AND PSALTER FOR ROMAN USE","description":"\u003cp\u003eThis rare and charming volume includes a Temporal Breviary and Liturgical Psalter, i.e. service books used in the daily offices, both for the use of Rome. The Proprium de tempore (fols 8r-190r) provides the liturgy for the celebration of the Divine Office from the first Sunday of Advent according to the rite of the Roman Curia, with no further specification but for the inclusion in the litany (fols 74v-77r) of Zenobius, bishop of Florence, among the confessors, and of the Franciscan saints Francis, Clare and Elisabeth among monks and virgins respectively. It is dated 12 February 1447 and preceded by a table of rubrics (fols 1v-7r). The Liturgical Psalter (fols 192r-268r) supplies hymns, canticles, antiphones, versicles and responses according to the Cursus Romanus of the liturgy of the Hours and it is datable to the third quarter of the 15th century. The Temporal and the Liturgical Psalter were copied by two different scribes and at different times, with the Psalter probably dating to the early 1460s.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\n\u003cp\u003eNevertheless, the pen-flourished decoration of the minor initials and the beautiful illumination of the borders and major initials are consistent throughout the book and seemingly belong to the same decorative campaign, datable to the 1460s or early 1470s. The illumination was executed by an eclectic anonymous artist who was strongly influenced by the style of earlier and contemporary illumination from Lombardy in Northern Italy as suggested by the illuminated borders on fols 8r and 192r and the portrait initials on fols 8r and 192v (see A. De Floriani, “La miniatura in Liguria nella seconda metà del Quattrocento: un bilancio provvisorio”).\u003c\/p\u003e\n\n\u003cp\u003eA connection with Northern Italy, and more specifically Liguria, is also suggested by the escutcheon in the bas-de-page and the depiction of a peacock in the border of the first page of the Breviary (fol. 8r), respectively identifiable as the arms and the emblem of the Cybos, a patrician family of Genoa. The nature of the text (a breviary for members of regular and secular clergy) and the cross above the shield, indicates an ecclesiastic of high status as the original owner. Two members of the Cybo family were created bishops and cardinals in the second half of the fifteenth century: Cardinal Giovanni Battista Cybo (1432-1492) bishop of Savona (1466-1472) and Molfetta (1472-1484), and his young cousin Cardinal Lorenzo Cybo de Mari (1450\/1-1503), archbishop of Benevento (1485-1503). As the cross above the arms shows the single horizontal limb of an episcopal cross, rather than the double traverse of the archiepiscopal one, the owner was Giovanni Battista Cybo before his election to the papacy as Pope Innocent VIII on 29 August 1484.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\n\u003cp\u003eIn November 1466 Giovanni Battista was made bishop of Savona, a town to the west of Genoa in the region of Liguria in Northern Italy; at the time under the government of the Duke of Milan, Galeazzo Maria Sforza. These political circumstances favoured the arrival in Liguria of artists from Lombardy who imported new models and a more sophisticated artistic style to provincial Liguria. It is therefore conceivable that the two texts, the Temporal Breviary and the Liturgical Psalter, were brought together, decorated and assembled in a single volume in Liguria (Savona or Genoa) as a gift to Cybo as Bishop of Savona. Through the depiction of Cybo’s peacock and of the partridge and white rabbits in the margins of the opening of the Temporal Breviary, the decoration of the book seems to bestow upon the bishop a life of splendour, wisdom and knowledge, purity and truth, resurrection and ultimately immortality.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\n\u003cp\u003eThis high quality manuscript for Cybo’s private devotion and therefore after his death probably remained in the possession of his family, whereas books belonging to him as pontiff were kept in the papal library (now the Vatican Library). The volume was certainly in use after the pope’s death as an unprofessional hand added two notes relating to the death of Innocent VIII and the election of his successor Alexander Borgia in August 1492 to fol. 272v. It was possibly passed on to the pope’s cousin Cardinal Lorenzo Cybo de Mari, who had the pope’s tomb in the Vatican basilica completed by the leading painter and sculptor Antonio del Pollaiuolo in 1498 and his body buried in the bronze monument on January 1498. It is worth noting that the pope’s arms on the tomb are identical to those found in this book [see A. Wright, The Pollaiuolo brothers: the arts of Florence and Rome, New Haven, 2005, chapter XIII].\u003c\/p\u003e\n\n\u003cp\u003eAs the book is not listed in the inventory of the books bequeathed by Cardinal Lorenzo to the Cathedral of Benevento (see A. Zaro, “L’Inventario dei libri antichi della Biblioteca Capitolare di Benevento”, Samnium, viii (1935), pp. 5-25, in particular pp. 23-5), it is probable that it was passed on as a prized possession to other members of the Cybo family, including Cardinal Innocenzo Cybo (1491-1550), the grandson of Innocent VIII, appointed as cardinal by his uncle Leo X in 1513, and Cardinals Alderano (1613-1700) and Camillo (1681-1743).\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"PORTABLE BREVIARY AND PSALTER FOR ROMAN USE","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":57816138875215,"sku":"K4","price":45950.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/1016\/2425\/0703\/files\/DSC_7972.jpg?v=1781795189","url":"https:\/\/www.sokol.co.uk\/products\/portable-breviary-and-psalter-for-roman-use","provider":"Sokol Books Ltd","version":"1.0","type":"link"}