Rare Book Monthly

Articles - April - 2021 Issue

Illuminated Manuscripts and Early Printed Books from the Collection of Elaine and Alexandre Rosenberg at Christie’s New York 23 April 2021

The collection of Elaine and Alexandre P. Rosenberg is among the most important collections of illuminated manuscripts and early printed books to have ever appeared at auction. Moreover, Christie’s is delighted to convey that the proceeds from the auction will benefit the Elaine and Alexandre Rosenberg Charitable Foundation supporting institutions in their collection and preservation of rare books.

 

Alexandre P. Rosenberg, founding president of the Art Dealers Association of America, bibliophile and archetypal ‘scholar-dealer’, was the son of the pre-eminent French art dealer Paul Rosenberg, one of the greatest figures in the Parisian art world of the 20th century, representing giants of modern art such as Picasso, Matisse and Braque, and an instrumental figure in the migration of French pictures to the United States during the first half of the last century. Pablo Picasso was a witness on Alexandre’s birth certificate in Paris in 1921 and would become Alexandre’s lifelong friend. Upon his father’s death, Alexandre took over the gallery in New York and won acclaim with exhibitions that ranged from Renaissance bronzes to Cezanne and Picasso, American modernists and contemporaries from England and Italy.

Alexandre Rosenberg’s love of books was intrinsic and concurrent to his love of art. He was a bibliophile since childhood and was about 14 years old when Pablo Picasso designed a woodcut bookplate just for him. The motif of the window open to the sea was a family favorite. In October 1919, towards the beginning of his exclusive representation of Picasso, Paul Rosenberg held a large exhibition of drawings on the theme of the open window at Saint Raphaël, where Picasso had been honeymooning with Olga. Picasso designed the invitation to this exhibition (also his first use of the medium of lithography) and Rosenberg came to favor the open-window motif in his gallery publications for decades following. Alexandre Rosenberg used the c.1935 bookplate design throughout his life and it is present in the books in this auction.

Elaine Rosenberg, daughter of Frederik Sobel and Martha Bauman Sobel, was born and raised in New York City. She worked as an aircraft riveter in California, and then at the Department of Censorship in New York City during World War II. In 1948 she married Alexandre, and together they shared a life of connoisseurship, collecting and philanthropy. She met and befriended many celebrated artists represented by Paul Rosenberg & Co., including Picasso, Marie Laurencin, Graham Sutherland, and Giacomo Manzù. After Alexandre’s premature death in 1987, Elaine continued to pursue the family’s quest for restitution of art looted by the Nazis during the war. She was an active and influential Fellow of The Morgan Library and remained deeply involved with the Museum of Modern Art and the Cloisters at the Metropolitan Museum of Art. Her generous bequests of the Paul Rosenberg Archives to MoMA in 2007, and of the splendid Prayer Book of Claude de France to The Morgan Library in 2008 were but two examples of her extensive philanthropy. She forged strong and lasting friendships with scholars and curators worldwide who loved her for her grace, intelligence, wit and characteristically direct manner. 

The illuminated manuscripts offered for sale represent the culmination of 15th- and 16th-century European manuscript painting, and are a testament to the discerning taste of Alexandre and Elaine Rosenberg. All highly individual, these manuscripts were not meant for the religious to use, not for clergy or monks in churches and monasteries, but for the delight of their lay owners. Beautiful, varied and highly personalized, through their pages the modern reader gets a very distinct sense of the original owner’s tastes, concerns and lives. Each manuscript presents an intimate gallery of miniature paintings by some of the most sought-after and accomplished artists of the French Renaissance: the Bedford Master, the Master of the Paris Bartholomaeus Anglicus, the Master of Jacques de Besançon, the Master of Jean de Mauléon; each manuscript stands out for its striking compositions, its jewel-like artworks, its sumptuous illumination or its understated, subtle elegance. Owned by some of the most important bibliophiles and collectors of their time – from the Holy Roman Emperor Charles V to the Earl of Ashburnham, Alfred Chester-Beatty, Henry Huth, William Randolph Hearst and André Hachette – several were exhibited at The Morgan Library in 1982 and appeared in John Plummer’s ground-breaking catalogue The Last Flowering: French painting in manuscripts, 1420-1530.

The printed books comprise over two hundred volumes printed in the 15th century and about a dozen Books of Hours, mostly printed on vellum, of the early 16th century.  The former is the most extensive collection of incunabula offered for public sale in decades. It is remarkable for the high proportion of volumes in their original 15th-century bindings, often elaborately decorated with tooling which can be localized to workshops in both Germany and across the Alps. The documentation of the geographical spread of printing in the first decades after Gutenberg must have had great resonance for Alexandre Rosenberg. He kept a mid-century map of Europe in his study and placed pins to mark the origins of the books in his collection. This is characteristic of the meticulousness of the Rosenberg family. The books were faithfully collated, described, photographed, and documented with receipts from the 1950s through the 1980s—providing a capsule view of the important auctions and dealers from these decades.

Hugely significant among the printed books is a complete first edition of the works of Plato. This edition was translated by Marsilio Ficino, one of the greatest scholars of Greek in the Renaissance, and printed in Florence by the nuns of San Jacopo di Ripoli.  Very little of Plato’s work had been accessible to Latin readers before Ficino’s translation and this edition marks the return of Plato’s philosophy to Western Europe after an absence of nearly 1000 years.  It is emblematic of the whole collection as, writ large, the incunabula document not only the development of the art of printing in its infancy but the rolling over of the Middle Ages into the Renaissance. Ancient and medieval texts alike are here accompanied by humanist commentaries and in humanist translations—rediscoveries as well as old chestnuts seen with new eyes. Many of them contain extensive marginalia from 15th- and 16th-century readers, and several are from the collections of prominent Renaissance intellectuals including Willibald Pirckheimer and Lionardo Salviati, comprising a material expression of the intellectual achievements and transformations of the period.

 

The sale will be a live auction on April 23rd at 10am. Books are available for viewing at Christie’s New York by appointment only.  Please e-mail gillianhawley@christies.com to make an appointment or with other questions.  Further details are available on all our upcoming auctions at christies.com.

Rare Book Monthly

  • Sotheby’s
    Modern First Editions
    Available for Immediate Purchase
    Sotheby’s, Available Now: Winston Churchill. The Second World War. Set of First-Edition Volumes. 6,000 USD
    Sotheby’s, Available Now: A.A. Milne, Ernest H. Shepard. A Collection of The Pooh Books. Set of First-Editions. 18,600 USD
    Sotheby’s, Available Now: Salvador Dalí, Lewis Carroll. Alice's Adventures in Wonderland. Finely Bound and Signed Limited Edition. 15,000 USD
    Sotheby’s
    Modern First Editions
    Available for Immediate Purchase
    Sotheby’s, Available Now: Ian Fleming. Live and Let Die. First Edition. 9,500 USD
    Sotheby’s, Available Now: J.K. Rowling. Harry Potter Series. Finely Bound First Printing Set of Complete Series. 5,650 USD
    Sotheby’s, Available Now: Ernest Hemingway. A Farewell to Arms. First Edition, First Printing. 4,200 USD
  • Bonhams, Mar. 22 – Apr. 2: A RUTH BADER GINSBURG BEADED JUDICIAL COLLAR. $80,000 - $120,000
    Bonhams, Mar. 22 – Apr. 2: ONLY KNOWN COPY OF THE ONLY BOOK BY THE REMARKABLE EVE ADAMS. $8,000 - $12,000
    Bonhams, Mar. 22 – Apr. 2: A COMPLETE RUN OF VISIONAIRE MAGAZINE THROUGH 2010. $6,000 - $9,000
    Bonhams, Mar. 22 – Apr. 2: LAW REVIEW OFFPRINT SIGNED AND INSCRIBED BY RUTH BADER GINSBURG. $3,000 - $5,000
    Bonhams, Mar. 22 – Apr. 2: META REBNER'S WORKING SCRIPT OF THE LOVED ONE. $1,500 - $2,000
    Bonhams, Mar. 22 – Apr. 2: A KATHY GROVE PORTRAIT OF CYNDI LAUPER FOR THE FEBRUARY 1989 DETAILS COVER. $800 - $1,200
    Bonhams, Mar. 22 – Apr. 2: A PLASTIC COAT BY MILLIE DAVID FEATURED IN SOHO NEWS STYLE SECTION, FROM THE COLLECTION OF ANNIE FLANDERS. $500 - $700
    Bonhams, Mar. 22 – Apr. 2: A RUTH BADER GINSBURG JEWELRY BOX. $600 - $900
    Bonhams, Mar. 22 – Apr. 2: A SET OF JONI MITCHELL LYRICS FOR "IF I HAD A HEART." $2,000 - $3,000
  • 19th Century Shop
    Catalogue 198 just published
    19th Century Shop. Darwin and Wallace, first printing of the first paper on natural selection
    19th Century Shop. Shakespeare’s Poems, first collected edition
    19th Century Shop. Walt Whitman portrait inscribed with a Leaves of Grass poem
    19th Century Shop. Major Elizabeth Barrett Browning manuscript notebook
    19th Century Shop. Spock's Baby Book, original MS
    19th Century Shop. Cellarius, Harmonia Macrocosmica, the great celestial atlas
  • Potter & Potter Auctions
    How History Unfolds on Paper:
    Choice Selections from the Eric C. Caren Collection
    Part IX
    April 18, 2024
    Potter & Potter, Apr. 18: [RUTH, George Herman “Babe” (1895-1948)]. Signed photograph. Circa 1930s. 191 x 248 mm. $1,500 to $2,500.
    Potter & Potter, Apr. 18: HARRISON, Benjamin. Document signed (“Benj Harrison”) as governor of Virginia, certifying the service of Daniel Cumbo, a Black Revolutionary soldier. $6,000 to $9,000.
    Potter & Potter, Apr. 18: ONE OF THE FIRST PRINTED ANNOUNCEMENTS OF THE DECLARATION OF INDEPENDENCE. $4,000 to $6,000.
    Potter & Potter Auctions
    How History Unfolds on Paper:
    Choice Selections from the Eric C. Caren Collection
    Part IX
    April 18, 2024
    Potter & Potter, Apr. 18: FIRST PRINTING OF LINCOLN’S IMMORTAL GETTYSBURG ADDRESS. $4,000 to $6,000.
    Potter & Potter, Apr. 18: HIGHLY IMPORTANT MORMON ARCHIVE. ALLEY, George. Archive of 23 Autograph Letters Signed by Mormon Convert George Alley to His Brother Joseph Alley. $10,000 to $20,000.
    Potter & Potter, Apr. 18: [AVIATION]. [ARMSTRONG, Neil A.] Aviation Hall of Fame Gold Medal MS64 NGC, Awarded to Neil Armstrong in 1979. $2,000 to $3,000.
    Potter & Potter Auctions
    How History Unfolds on Paper:
    Choice Selections from the Eric C. Caren Collection
    Part IX
    April 18, 2024
    Potter & Potter, Apr. 18: NEWLY DISCOVERED FIRST PRINTING OF "WITH MALICE TOWARDS NONE... " FROM THE ONLY NEWSPAPER ACTUALLY ALLOWED TO PARTICIPATE IN LINCOLN’S SECOND INAUGURAL PROCESSION. $4,000 to $8,000.
    Potter & Potter, Apr. 18: THE MOST IMPORTANT GEORGE WASHINGTON DOCUMENT IN PRIVATE HANDS; GEORGE WASHINGTON’S COMMISSION AS COMMANDER IN CHIEF, 1775, ONE OF ONLY TWO ORIGINALS. $150,000 to $250,000.
    Potter & Potter, Apr. 18: A VERY RARE ACCOUNT OF BLACKBEARD’S DEATH AND ONE OF THE MOST IMPORTANT PIRATE ITEMS EXTANT. $3,000 to $5,000.
    Potter & Potter Auctions
    How History Unfolds on Paper:
    Choice Selections from the Eric C. Caren Collection
    Part IX
    April 18, 2024
    Potter & Potter, Apr. 18: EDISON, Thomas. Patent for Edison’s Improvements on the Electric-Light, No. 219,628. [Washington, D.C.: U.S. Patent Office], 16 September 1879. $2,000 to $3,000.
    Potter & Potter, Apr. 18: [VIETNAM WAR]. The original pen used by Secretary of State William P. Rogers to sign the Vietnam Peace Agreement, Paris, 27 January 1973. $10,000 to $15,000.
    Potter & Potter, Apr. 18: SONS OF LIBERTY FOUNDER COLONEL BARRÉ ANNOTATED TITLE-PAGE, “WHICH OUGHT TO ROUSE UP BRITISH ATTENTION”. $4,000 to $6,000.
  • Forum Auctions
    Books, Manuscripts and Works on Paper
    28th March 2024
    Forum Mar. 28: [Langland (William)]. The vision of Pierce Plowman, nowe the seconde time imprinted..., Roberte Crowley, 1550. £8,000 to £10,000.
    Forum Mar. 28: [Shakespeare (William)]. [Comedies, Histories, and Tragedies], second folio edition, [by Tho.Cotes, for Robert Allot], [1632]. £30,000 to £40,000.
    Forum Mar. 28: Bible, Czech Biblia Bohemica, first complete Bible printed in the Czech vernacular, Prague, August 1488. £30,000 to £40,000.
    Forum Auctions
    Books, Manuscripts and Works on Paper
    28th March 2024
    Forum Mar. 28: Shabthai Tzvi.- Collection of four printed and illustrated broadsides detailing the appearance, rise and fall of the false messiah, Shabthai Tzvi, Augsburg, 1666-67. £40,000 to £60,000.
    Forum Mar. 28: Leaf from the Beauvais Missal, in Latin, illuminated manuscript on parchment, [Northern France (perhaps Beauvais or Amiens)], [fourteenth century (c.1310)]. £4,000 to £6,000.
    Forum Mar. 28: Aubrey (John). [Remaines of Gentilisme and Judaisme], manuscript in English, Latin and Greek, [c. 1693]. £30,000 to £50,000.
    Forum Auctions
    Books, Manuscripts and Works on Paper
    28th March 2024
    Forum Mar. 28: Byron (George Gordon Noel, Lord). Poems on Various Occasions, first edition, Harriet Maltby's copy, Newark, Printed by S. & J. Ridge, 1807. £30,000 to £40,000.
    Forum Mar. 28: Tolkien (J.R.R.) The Hobbit, first edition, second impression with dust-jacket, 1937 [but 1938]. £7,000 to £10,000.
    Forum Mar. 28: Blake (William).- Thornton (Robert John). The Pastorals of Virgil, 2 vol., engraved plates by William Blake, 1821. £8,000 to £12,000.
    Forum Auctions
    Books, Manuscripts and Works on Paper
    28th March 2024
    Forum Mar. 28: America.- Mount (William J.) & Thomas Page. The English Pilot…, [bound with] The Fourth Book, describing The West Indies Navigation from Hudson's-Bay to the River Amazones, 1721. £20,000 to £30,000.
    Forum Mar. 28: Oldfield (Henry Ambrose), Rajman Singh Chitrakar & others. An album of 160 photographs and 13 original artworks, (1833-1919), [c. 1850s-1880s]. £20,000 to £30,000.
    Forum Mar. 28: Audubon (John James) [and William MacGillivray]. Ornithological Biography…, 5 vol., first edition, presentation copy inscribed by Audubon, Edinburgh, 1831-49 [i.e. 1831-39]. £10,000 to £15,000.

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