Manuscript on parchment and paper of the Alfonsine Tables, a scientific work on astronomy, executed on parchment and decorated, but unfinished, to which paper leaves have been added at a not much later date, and the text completed, probably by a scholar
Description:
In Latin., Watermarks: 1) ladder in a circle with star at top, two varieties, similar to Briquet 5920; 2) eagle displayed within a circle, similar to Briquet 203., Script: Four scribes have written the manuscript: (1) the professional, humanistic hand of the parchment section; (2) the rapid, partly illegible cursive hand of the paper leaves; (3) a late humanistic hand which has supplied "radices" in red and brown inks in the lower margins of ff. 33-38; (4) a hand that filled in the numerals on the whole of f. 63r and a part of f. 36v, distinguishable by his numeral "7"., In the parchment section, headlines and part of the writing in red (the sixth place in each table is outlined in yellow glair, except in the table on f. 57r, where the ninth, fifteenth, and twenty-first places are outlined in blues). Longitudinal spaces between columns of the tables in the parchment section, ff. 38v-42v, 53r, and 61r-70v, have been decorated with arabesque patterns of vines, leaves, and flowers in great variety and usually in differing combinations of glair and blue, but the work has been left unfinished toward the end of the section. No illustration., and Binding: Modern. Blue morocco, gilt, matching slipcase of straight-grained blue morocco, by R. Wallis, original gilt edges.
