Bible

Acts

F-vkxq

Cambridge, MA, Harvard University, Houghton Library, MS Typ 101

Host Volume

Remarks

While the spaces left for illustrations in the text conform to frame shapes in the model book, they are often too small to have accepted the model book designs directly. A question therefore arises as to the original relationship between the two sections of the Harvard manuscript. The model book folios are slightly larger than the text folios, and the parchment quality of the model book is different from that of the text. The original stitching hole patterns are markedly different for the model book and for the text. The inscriptions on the paintings and the script of the text are also different. The earliest foliation is in the text section, which originally began with fol. 1 (see n. 3). Faintly inked Roman numerals, probably from the fifteenth century, beside the miniatures correspond with the thirteenth century text foliation, indicating where each design would have been placed (visible in Figs. 2.1, 2.4). It should be recalled that the binding is also from the fifteenth century, which may indicate the period when the two portions of the manuscript were brought together. It may have been Spergaz, the fifteenth century owner, who put in the Roman numerals so that a reader could find the corresponding chapters in the text.