ILLUSTRATED right is the opening page of a 1468 paper manuscript copy (in period-style panelled calf with period clasps) of Jacob de Voragine’s 13th century history of the lives of the saints, Legenda Aurea – otherwise decorated with rubricated initials throughout – that with some staining to the opening leaves sold at $18,000 (£9780) in a Bonhams & Butterfields of San Francisco sale of June 28.
Seen bottom right is the single illuminated page from a 1486 edition of the work printed in Basel by Nicholas Kesler that, in a modern pigskin binding with part of the upper cover and spine now sunned, made £4600 (Poole) at Bloomsbury Auctions on June 17.
The latter, which has a title page inscription noting its loan to an Albrecht Juny of the Franciscan convent of Schwäbisch-Gemünd, was formerly in the Broxbourne Library at Sotheby's in 1977, it sold for £380.
