The Estelle Doheny Collection from the Edward Laurence Doheny Memorial Library, St. John's Seminary, Camarillo, California : Sold on Behalf of the Archdiocese of Los Angeles. Part II : Medieval and Renaissance manuscripts. [ Christie's, auction catalogue, sale date: 2 December, 1987 ]

Christie, Manson & Woods, London, auction catalogue for the sale held on 2nd December 1987. Cloth, gilt cover-titles, large 8vo, 31 cm,. 125 pp, plates (some colour). Lots 137 to 182 From the introduction: "Mrs. Doheny made her first purchases of manuscripts in 1931 from Alice Parsons Millard. She bought then a thirteenth-century Bible (lot 147), a Book of Hours for Sarum use (lot 162) and a Petrarch (lot 164). In the same year she bought two items from the Bernard Quaritch catalogue of manuscripts which had just been issued, using Mrs. Millard to order them on her behalf; these were a large French Bible (lot 150) and the calligraphic Epistolae S. Pauli (lot 173). Although her main interest was book collecting, she nevertheless managed to assemble a small, but select collection containing some quite remarkable manuscripts. In the course of cataloguing, the true range and coherence of this collection became apparent. Every aspect of medieval manuscript production is represented, from fine examples of early German monastic books to late Renaissance calligraphic works and the remarkable cut-work book for Anne of Austria (lot 180). The dominant theme of the collection is religious, but in each category the choices were obviously careful and remarkably judicious. For instance, amongst the Books of Hours in the collection we have the splendid book from the 1520's Hours workshop by the Doheny Master (lot 174), among the romanesque books the superb English Zacharias Chrysopolitanus (lot 143); fine gothic examples include the remarkable Flemish Speculum with its wonderful marginal grotesques (lot 152), and the French Bible Historiale (lot 157); even the sole Armenian manuscript is one of the finest examples of its kind (lot 182). In complete contrast is one of the few secular manuscripts, the Portolan Atlas by Battista Agnese, made in 1544 with splendid maps of the world as it was then known. Very Good.