Description
Facsimile edition of the Ashmole 1511 manuscript from the Bodleian Library, better known as the “Oxford Bestiary”, produced by Adeva and Arte y Bibliofilia in 1982 in a numbered print run limited to 495 copies.
Facsimile bound in leather, spine and plans adorned with golden figures and a large dry-embossed tree. 208 pages with gothic typography and 131 miniatures on a gold background, 6 full page, decorated capitals. With carrying case.
Accompanied by the corresponding study volume in Spanish (ISBN 9788485005659). Hard cover format 19 x 29 cm. 176 pages. Translation by Carmen Andreu Peon. Codicological and aesthetic study by Xénia Muratova. Bestiaries in Medieval Literature by Daniel Poiriion.
Superb edition of a manuscript in the collection of the freemason alchemist and astrologer Elías Ashmole (1617-1692), preserved in the Bodleian Library in Oxford. Printed in regular and uniform Gothic script, with red and blue filigree capital letters of modest dimensions, six sheets adorned with spectacular full-page miniatures, all on a gold background, among which the image of Christ or the creator God stands out, and 131 beautiful engraved with polychrome figures of animals, all equally on a gold background, which show a good knowledge of the natural sciences. The work is a didactic treatise on the allegorical, religious and moral significance of the animals mentioned in the Bible and has a double meaning: it shows the knowledge of nature as a way to approach God, and it is a hymn of praise to the Creator.
According to the study book: “Bestiary par excellence, its style and its iconographic program allow us to see in it the apogee of a long tradition. An important document of its time, this work on the properties of animals, real and fabulous, reveals the state of medieval knowledge about nature and the evolution of the concept of the world typical of the Middle Ages. […] Like any important illuminated manuscript, it stands at the crossroads of numerous historical, artistic, stylistic and iconographic problems of its time. This codex is presented in the form of a volume bound in the 19th century with morocco […] The book is made up of 104 sheets of parchment 275 mm high by 180 mm wide. […] The miniatures in the Ashmole 1511 manuscript belong to the most notable works of English painting from the time of the transition from Romanesque to Gothic. This step from the abstract expressiveness and the phantasmagorical imagery of the Romanesque to the orderly nobility of the Gothic, is situated, in English art, between 1180 and 1220.”
According to a note from the Spanish edition: “This unabridged facsimile edition of the Bestiarium codex, Ms. Ashmole 1511 from the Oxford University Bodleian Library, was printed in the Adeva workshops in Graz and bound by Alfonso and Miguel Ramos in Madrid. The Spanish edition for the collection “De heri et semper”, directed by Rafael Casariego in Ediciones Arte y Bibliofilia, consists of 495 copies.”
Complete copy and in perfect condition.
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