“Dear all,
Here are some incunabula news again.
– The long-awaited final instalment of the Bibliothèque nationale de France incunabula catalog is out: Catalogue des incunables (CIBN), Tome I Fasc. 4: E-G et supplément, Paris: BN, 2014 (ISBN 978-2-7177-2561-2), again featuring quite a lot of hitherto unrecorded items. Excellent bibliographical work as usual, thanks to Nicolas Petit, Denise Hillard and Ursula Baurmeister whom I’d like to congratulate on the completion of their invaluable project.
– Another important new publication: Catalogue of the Incunables in the Library and Information Centre of the Hungarian Academy of Sciences … Inc-MTA. Compiled by Marianne Rozsondai and Béla Rozsondai, Budapest: Library of the Hungarian Academy of Sciences, 2013 (ISBN 978-963-446-695-6, in English!)
– A short list of illustrated incunabula at the Biblioteca Casanatense, Rome, is available at http://www.casanatense.it/index.php/it/gli-editoriali/50-gli-editoriali/375-gli-incunaboli-miniati-della-casanatense.html
– GW has added two small, hitherto unrecorded Spanish collections to its database, both located in Segovia and not present in IBE: The Biblioteca del Seminario (see Peñas Barroso, María del Mar: Cuatro incunables inéditos en la Biblioteca del seminario de Segovia, Estudios segovianos 109 (2010) pp. 391-428) and the Biblioteca de la Diputación (ead., Dos incunables inéditos en la Biblioteca de la Diputación, Estudios segovianos 106 (2007) pp. 199-219). There is also a charming film on YouTube about the Diputación library at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SwZQshd-aAo, starring their two 15th-century volumes, text in Spanish.
– New incunabula in the GW database: A Plenarium printed by Melchior Lotter, Leipzig, c. 1500, only copy in the Gleimhaus in Halberstadt (Germany): http://gesamtkatalogderwiegendrucke.de/docs/M3405250.htm; and another broadside, this one found in the State Archives in Meiningen (Thuringia): http://gesamtkatalogderwiegendrucke.de/docs/M4410950.htm
– O on his highly recommended blog “Research Fragments”, Jonathan Green has provided some useful graphs relating to Eric White’s Census of Print Runs for Fifteenth-Century Books: http://researchfragments.blogspot.de/2014/04/eric-white-census-print-runs-for.html
– Finally, most of you who read auction and or sale catalogs will have noticed that there are lots of incunabula on the market, including some really interesting ones. Among the many outstanding auctions that have already taken place or are about to happen I’d like to highlight the upcoming event at Sotheby’s London. Under the somewhat misleading label “Music, Continental and Russian Books and Manuscripts” (http://www.sothebys.com/en/auctions/2014/music-continental-books-manuscripts-l14402.html, scheduled May 20), the catalog contains about 40 incunabula, among them leftover items from last year’s Law Society sale (as discussed here; lot #19seq.) and a couple of fragments from a paper copy of the Gutenberg Bible (lots #109 and 110). However, perhaps the most interesting batch at least from a German perspective are numbers 1-18, disguised as “Property of a European Princely Family”. A quick look at the copy descriptions of the 10 remarkable incunabula reveals that the whole batch is from the Fürstlich Hohenzollernsche Hofbibliothek, Sigmaringen (Southwest Germany) [about this collection see for example http://fabian.sub.uni-goettingen.de/fabian?Fuerstliches_Archiv_(Sigmaringen), in German]. A very prominent provenance indeed, but I figure there will be controversial discussions about this sale.
Thank you, best wishes,
Falk
Dr. Falk Eisermann” (Exlibris-Liste, Hervorhebung von mir)
Die Hofbibliothek Sigmaringen ist eine der wichtigsten Altbestandsbibliotheken in privater Hand. Von einem Denkmalschutz ist nichts bekannt. Bereits nach dem Zweiten Weltkrieg verscherbelte der Eigentümer Handschriften-Pretiosen. Die Sigmaringer Inkunabeln sind in INKA erfasst, sie wurden von der UB Tübingen aus bearbeitet und enthalten u.a. Tübinger Dubletten und Dubletten der Hofbibliothek Donaueschingen (mit Inkunabelverkäufen begann auch deren Zerstückelung 1994).
Sotheby’s Lot 4
http://www.sothebys.com/en/auctions/ecatalogue/2014/music-continental-books-manuscripts-l14402/lot.4.html#
ist beispielsweise
http://www.inka.uni-tuebingen.de/?inka=21000057
Auch unter den frühneuzeitlichen Drucken sind schützenswerte Provenienzen:
Der Brahe Nr. 7: “Provenance
Jesuits of Freiburg im Breisgau, inscription at head of title-page dated 1640; given in memory of Basil Perger, professor of astronomy in Ochsenhausen, inscription at end signed by Father Nicolaus Remmele (1773-1811) and dated 10 October 1804 in Ochsenhausen (Baden-Württemberg)”
Es ist ein Unding, dass die Hohenzollern wertvolles südwestdeutsches Kulturgut auf den Markt geben, das als Ganzes zusammengehalten werden müsste. Ich bleibe natürlich am Ball.
Update:
http://archiv.twoday.net/stories/876868418
Dublette der UB Tübingen mit Besitzvermerk Konrad Hagers
https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Hofbibliothek_sigmaringen_sotheby_s.jpg