Fitzwilliam Museum Research Articles

Alchemy in Cambridge. An Annotated Catalogue of Alchemical Texts and Illustrations in Cambridge Repositories.

Alchemy in Cambridge captures the alchemical content of 56 manuscripts in Cambridge, in particular the libraries of Trinity College, Corpus Christi College and St John's College, the University Library and the Fitzwilliam Museum. As such, this catalogue makes visible a large number of previously unknown or obscured alchemica. While extant bibliographies, including those by M.R. James a century ago, were compiled by polymathic bibliographers for a wide audience of researchers, Alchemy in Cambridge benefits from the substantial developments in the history of alchemy, bibliography, and related scholarship in recent decades. Many texts are here identified for the first time. Another vital feature is the incorporation of information on alchemical illustrations in the manuscripts, intended to facilitate research on the visual culture of alchemy. The catalogue is aimed at historians of alchemy and science, and of high interest to manuscript scholars, historians of art and historians of college and university libraries.

Les martyrologes manuscrits des anciens Bollandistes et leur dispersion: à propos d’un exemplaire retrouvé à Cambridge

H. Rosweyde and the first Bollandists built up a large collection of martyrologia which was used by Jean-Baptiste Du Sollier to edit Usuard in 1714 but from 1775 on, as a result of political events, it was gradually dispersed. This study draws up an inventory of the documents (originals and copies) which Du Sollier used together with the details of their present location or supplies data useful for their identification in the future. One of the martyrologia of the former Bollandist collection, which is now MS 40 in the Fitzwilliam Museum of Cambridge, was not consulted by Du Sollier because of a cataloguing error in the library at Antwerp.

Panayotova, Stella, Nigel Morgan, and Suzanne Reynolds, eds. Illuminated Manuscripts in Cambridge: A Catalogue of Western Book Illumination in the Fitzwilliam Museum and the Cambridge Colleges. Part Two, Italy and the Iberian Peninsula. 2 vols. Turnhout: Brepols; London: Harvey Miller

Panayotova, Stella, Nigel Morgan, and Suzanne Reynolds, eds. <i>Illuminated Manuscripts in Cambridge: A Catalogue of Western Book Illumination in the Fitzwilliam Museum and the Cambridge Colleges</i>. Part Two, <i>Italy and the Iberian Peninsula</i>. 2 vols. Turnhout: Brepols; London: Harvey Miller

Stories behind the Stitches: Schoolgirl Samplers of the Eighteenth and Nineteenth Centuries

In the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, samplers were increasingly being used as an educational tool for girls from all social backgrounds. Needlework was a necessary craft particularly for girls from impoverished positions as it prevented idleness and gave them employable skills. Samplers stitched in charity schools or orphanages not only exercised simple embroidery techniques, but also provided instruction in literacy and numeracy. Inscriptions usually include the maker's name, age, year, moralizing text, and the school in which the scholar received her education. This data is a starting point to discover information about the stitcher, the school, and the role of needlework in educational institutions.This article will examine schoolgirl samplers from the Fitzwilliam Museum's extensive collection. Putting the examples in a historical context illuminates issues of gender and education at this time. In some cases scant information exists on the girls and these schoolroom objects are the only proof of their existence. But in other instances, life stories have been traced from childhood through to adulthood and old age, with needlework skills helping to provide an income throughout. These examples overall serve as a testament to their makers’ patience and skill, and are invaluable historical documents that can tell us personal stories about the girls who made these classroom items.

Surface and Symptom on a Bestiary Page: Orifices on Folios 61v–62r of Cambridge, Fitzwilliam Museum, MS 20

This essay explores how a “surface reading” can at the same time be a “symptomatic reading” when the surface in question is skin. Via a close reading of a double page containing the chapters on the weasel and the aspic in a fourteenth-century French copy of Guillaume le Clerc’s Bestiaire (Cambridge, Fitzwilliam Museum, MS 20), it examines the treatment of bodily orifices in the text and the copy, including uncanny parallels between them and the parchment of these pages. The skins in question — those of the bestiary creatures, their readers, and the facing pages — are not flat but marked with recesses and gaps that function as symptoms of anxiety about excess as animal and that become overlaid with fantasy, which, however, remains informed by this anxiety. The bestiary page both jars bodily origins against cultural aspirations and exposes their collision, processes that the writings of Didier Anzieu can help to illumine.

A Catalogue of Western Book Illumination in the FitzWilliam Museum and the Cambridge Colleges eds. by Nigel Morgan, Stella Panayotova, and Suzanne Reynolds (review)

Reviewed by: A Catalogue of Western Book Illumination in the FitzWilliam Museum and the Cambridge Colleges eds. by Nigel Morgan, Stella Panayotova, and Suzanne Reynolds Linde M. Brocato Morgan, Nigel, Stella Panayotova, and Suzanne Reynolds, eds. A Catalogue of Western Book Illumination in the FitzWilliam Museum and the Cambridge Colleges. Part II: Italy and the Iberian Peninsula. Illuminated Manuscripts in Cambridge, II. London and Turnhout: Harvey Miller Publishers, an imprint of Brepols, 2011 (2012). 712 pp.; 900 color illustrations. ISBN:978-1-905375-85-1 (2 vol. set) €200.00 ($265.00) The present catalog is volume II from the ongoing series “Illuminated Manuscripts in Cambridge”, comprising Italian and Iberian manuscripts from the Middle Ages through the seventeenth century, with pride of place given to the much richer Italian holdings (nos. 1-361). Vol. I, The Frankish Kingdoms, the Netherlands, Germany, Bohemia, Hungary and Austria (2 vols.) appeared in 2009, with France (III) and England (IV), plus Illuminated Incunabula (V) to follow. Inclusion in these geographic categories is by origin of the manuscript, but they are cross-referenced by early provenance and annotations as well (e.g. 364 below). The illuminated manuscripts of Cambridge University Library are being cataloged in a separate project and are not included here. The Iberian illuminated manuscripts are entries 362-395 in volume 2 (i.e. less than 10% of the catalog), and largely consist of entire texts of one sort or another, with some 12 entries for fragments. Alas, the editors maintain a close focus, and nowhere relate the quantity of illluminated manuscripts to the total holdings of early manuscripts at Cambridge. The latter are largely from liturgical manuscripts, primarily from the nineteenth-century collection of cuttings amassed by Charles Brinsley Marlay; for those who want further information on Marlay himself and this shocking practice, see “The Bequest of Charles Brinsley Marlay” in the FitzWilliam Museum’s web exhibit “‘I turned it into a palace’: Sir Sydney Cockerell and the FitzWilliam Museum.”. Indeed the FitzWilliam Museum website has many resources related to these catalogs, including images that can be accessed via their “Collection Explorer”. Standard entries for the entire project are detailed and description is technical but concise. Entries begin with a heading containing the number in this catalog, the library or museum holding the manuscript with its shelf mark, followed by [End Page 212] a brief characterization of the manuscript, for example “Religious miscellany | In Latin | Spain, mid-twelfth century”. Next is a physical description of the object, the composition of the volume and the dimensions and features of the page, with a description of the binding, and identification of the secundo folio, of named scribes and identified artists, and of the script. There are sections for contents, decoration, and ornamentation; the latter are quite technical and are an inventory of significant features and salient individual decorative and ornamental elements, often illustrated. When the decoration includes a coat of arms, the blazon is rendered in English heraldic style (for example, “or six fetterlocks sable, on a pale gules two fetterlocks sable”; 365). A “Provenance” section details all the indications of ownership, and traces the manuscript’s history as much as possible; many Cambridge colleges still hold their own medieval collections. The comments discuss more fully the details in the descriptive sections, relate the manuscript or fragment to others whether at Cambridge or in other collections, and discuss differing judgments on the particulars of the manuscript, including citations to the literature. Entries close with references to catalogs of exhibitions of the item, and to the literature discussing it, referring to the bibliographies at the end of Volume Two. For many items, only some of these categories of information apply, and only relevant sections of each entry are included. In the following, I will give an overview of the features of the Iberian collection(s) cataloged here, by groupings of various sorts, with a more detailed discussion of some few individual manuscripts, identifying them by catalog entry number, with a list of entries so discussed and their location and shelf mark at the end of my review. Arranged chronologically within geographical area (Portugal with one entry, then Spain), the manuscripts are largely fifteenth- and sixteenth...

New Kingdom Ostraka from the Fitzwilliam Museum, Cambridge.

New Kingdom Ostraka from the Fitzwilliam Museum, Cambridge.

A case study in collaboration: displaying Greece and Rome at the Fitzwilliam Museum, Cambridge, UK

With the decrease in funding for museums, increasingly scarce resources are, of necessity, concentrated on audience engagement. The responsibility for public exhibits is now shared between interpretation and display professionals, and curators and academics, but in practice the balance between scholarly content and accessibility can be precarious. This article considers the redisplay of the permanent gallery of ancient Greece and Rome at the Fitzwilliam Museum, Cambridge, which was a project driven by curators, conservators and university academics working closely with technical and practical specialists. It records the processes and issues that are often encountered in the creation of a gallery but too rarely published, and argues for the complete integration of academic research as central to the creation of museum displays. The success of the Fitzwilliam display demonstrates that subject-specialists can produce exhibits that are at once academically rigorous and visitor-friendly.

Roman Coins from the Masson and Mackenzie Collections in the British Museum

The British East India Company’s Museum in Leadenhall Street housed an eclectic range of objects that were predominantly collected by those associated with the Company. Charles Masson and Colin Mackenzie were two such individuals. Their collections were acquired by the EIC, and after the closure of the museum in 1878 the majority of the collections were dispersed to various institutions, including the British Museum, the Fitzwilliam Museum, and the Indian Museum in Calcutta. While some coins were transferred to museums, most were sold at auction. In 1995, approximately 10,500 coins were discovered in the British Library's India Office Collections. Some 7000 of these came from Masson’s collection, and in December 2011 the majority of the remaining c. 4000 coins were traced to the Mackenzie collection.Among the India Office coins were 117 Roman and Nabatean bronze coins. This article examines them in more detail, also considering by whom, where, and when they were acquired, thus shedding considerable light on Masson and Mackenzie’s travels and collecting practices. Furthermore, it highlights the many thousands of late Roman bronze coins, from the fifth to seventh century AD, that were discovered in South India. It also brings out the urgent necessity of conducting a more detailed study to understand this period of Indo-Roman trading relations and the role of the late Roman bronze coins in South India.

The Doctrine of the Hert: A Critical Edition with Introduction and Commentary and A Companion to “The Doctrine of the Hert”: The Middle English Translation and Its Latin and European Contexts

The Doctrine of the Hert: A Critical Edition with Introduction and Commentary and A Companion to “The Doctrine of the Hert”: The Middle English Translation and Its Latin and European Contexts

Quentin Blake: Drawn By Hand

Fitzwilliam Museum, Cambridge 12 February–12 May 2013 The hand-sketched ink drawings with a splash of lively watercolour are instantly recognisable as the work of Quentin Blake. Known best for his illustrations of children’s books and in particular, his work with Roald Dahl, it was his sketches that brought the characters to life. Blake has illustrated Matilda , Charlie and the Chocolate Factory , and James and the Giant Peach along with over 300 other children’s books. …

From Tarporley to Dolon: The Reattribution of the Early South Italian “New York Goose Vase”

From Tarporley to Dolon: The Reattribution of the Early South Italian “New York Goose Vase”

A Catalogue of Western Book Illumination in the Fitzwilliam Museum and the Cambridge Colleges. Part Two: Italy and the Iberian Peninsula, ed. Nigel Morgan, Stella Panayatova and Suzanne Reynolds, 2 vols. London and Turnhout, Harvey Miller, 2011, vol. 1: 334 p., vol. 2: 384 p. Indexes.

A Catalogue of Western Book Illumination in the Fitzwilliam Museum and the Cambridge Colleges. Part Two: Italy and the Iberian Peninsula, ed. Nigel Morgan, Stella Panayatova and Suzanne Reynolds, 2 vols. London and Turnhout, Harvey Miller, 2011, vol. 1: 334 p., vol. 2: 384 p. Indexes.

‘It's not easy being green’: a spectroscopic study of green pigments used in illuminated manuscripts

This study explores the use of green pigments and mixtures in manuscript illumination, drawing upon experimental evidence derived from a non-invasive spectroscopic survey of green pigments used in 31 bound manuscripts and 23 manuscript cuttings or single folios in the collections of the Fitzwilliam Museum in Cambridge, UK. Analytical investigations were carried out on green-coloured areas by visible and near-infrared fibre optic reflectance spectroscopy (FORS), at times supplemented by X-ray fluorescence (XRF). FORS spectra can easily be acquired in great numbers and without subjecting the manuscripts to any physical strain, making this technique especially suitable for analytical surveys of valuable and fragile objects. Despite some drawbacks, its use in combination with XRF often provides a relatively complete characterisation of pigments and mixtures, particularly when FORS analysis is extended into the shortwave-infrared range (to 2500 nm). The experimental results are examined in light of the recipes for green pigments found in medieval technical treatises. The outcome is a contextualized study with a focus on French illumination between the 13th and the 16th century, but allowing for comparisons with contemporary materials of different geographic origin.

Western illuminated manuscripts: a catalogue of the collection in Cambridge University library

Cambridge University Library's collection of illuminated manuscripts is of international significance. It originates in the medieval university and stands alongside the holdings of the colleges and the Fitzwilliam Museum. The University Library contains major European examples of medieval illumination from the ninth to the sixteenth centuries, with acknowledged masterpieces of Romanesque, Gothic and Renaissance book art, as well as illuminated literary texts, including the first complete Chaucer manuscript. This catalogue provides scholars and researchers easy access to the University Library's illuminated manuscripts, evaluating the importance of many of them for the very first time. It contains descriptions of famous manuscripts, for example the Life of Edward the Confessor attributed to Matthew Paris, as well as hundreds of lesser-known items. Beautifully illustrated throughout, the catalogue contains descriptions of individual manuscripts with up-to-date assessments of their style, origins and importance, together with bibliographical references.

From the Cam to the Cephissus: The Fitzwilliam Museum and students of the British School at Athens

The Fitzwilliam Museum holds material brought back to England by some of the early nineteenth-century travellers to Greece, including Edward Daniel Clarke and William Martin Leake. However, it was not until the later nineteenth century, with the founding of such organizations as the British School at Athens and the Cyprus Exploration Fund, that the Museum's collections started to be enriched through material excavated or otherwise acquired in Greece by archaeologists and other students. This article maps the impact of the emerging discipline of archaeology on the Fitzwilliam's collections in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. It also demonstrates how the Museum profited from the close connections between students, archaeologists and museum officers of the period.

Introduction: Greece and Rome at the Fitzwilliam Museum

THE following essays present aspects of the collection history of the Greek, Roman and Etruscan antiquities in the Fitzwilliam Museum, Cambridge. These have grown out of a collaborative research project that underpinned the 2010 redisplay of classical antiquities at the Fitzwilliam (Fig. 1). A grant awarded by the Arts and Humanities Research Council enabled museum curators and conservators to work together with colleagues in the Faculty of Classics,1 initially to ensure that the new displays, and especially the information provided in the gallery, were informed by current ways of thinking about the ancient world. Once the gallery re-opened to the public the collaborators moved on to research and publish the collections.2 In both the gallery presentations and in our subsequent – and continuing – campaigns of information dissemination, we have tried to explain why these particular objects are in Cambridge and also why the displays and the individual objects look the way they do. We have done this by emphasizing the different groups of people who have influenced the shape, appearance or destination of the objects at various times in their history. This process starts, of course, with the artists and craftsmen involved in the production of, say, a Greek vase or a Roman sarcophagus; it moves on to take into account those who originally used or handled the objects; and it continues into the modern era by highlighting the excavators who brought the objects back to light, and the collectors, curators, conservators and other scholars who have contributed in one way or other to the objects’ presence in the Fitzwilliam, to the way they look today, or to our understanding of them.

In the gallery: priorities today

How do visitors make sense of displays? What should curators be trying to achieve with them? Some 70 experts and students spent a day on these and related issues at the Fitzwilliam Museum, in Cambridge University, on 23 September last, to celebrate the completed rearrangement of its Greek &amp; Roman gallery. That project provoked much of the discussion but comparisons were drawn from the current development of Oxford Universitys Ashmolean Museum and from elsewhere in Britain and overseas (James 2009, 2010). Short lectures by Kate Cooper and Lucilla Burn, of the Fitzwilliam, and by Rick Mather, architect of the Ashmolean’s rearrangements, were followed by eight panellists’ remarks on technical and methodological issues; and the day was rounded off with the Museum’s Severis Lecture for 2011,Dimitrios Pandermalis on The new AcropolisMuseum: project and realization’ (Figure 1).

The Antiquities Department takes shape: The Fitzwilliam in the early twentieth century

The first half of the twentieth century saw vast changes in the running of the Fitzwilliam Museum, particularly in terms of the growing professionalization and specialization of the whole institution. This paper draws on largely unpublished sources to trace the development of the Greek and Roman department and the way in which the Museum acquired and curated antiquities. It begins by setting the scene with an overview of the Museum from the late nineteenth to mid-twentieth century, before focusing specifically on the vicissitudes of the Greek and Roman collection. The whole paper is loosely framed around the tenure of Winifred Lamb, second Honorary Keeper of Greek and Roman Antiquities, who joined the Museum a decade after the post of Honorary Keeper was established, and left only when the first salaried Senior Assistant Keeper of the Antiquities department – Richard Nicholls – was appointed in 1958.

The Index of Middle English Prose, General Editor A. S. G. Edwards: Kari Anne Rand,Handlist XVIII: Manuscripts in the Library of Pembroke College, Cambridge, and the Fitzwilliam Museum; Margaret Connolly,Handlist XIX: Manuscripts in the University Library, Cambridge (Dd–Oo); Kari Anne Rand,Handlist XX: Manuscripts in the Library of Corpus Christi College, Cambridge

Article The Index of Middle English Prose, General Editor A. S. G. Edwards: Kari Anne Rand, Handlist XVIII: Manuscripts in the Library of Pembroke College, Cambridge, and the Fitzwilliam Museum; Margaret Connolly, Handlist XIX: Manuscripts in the University Library, Cambridge (DdOo); Kari Anne Rand, Handlist XX: Manuscripts in the Library of Corpus Christi College, Cambridge was published on December 1, 2011 in the journal Anglia (volume 129, issue 3-4).