15th Century Bartholomaeus Anglicus Incunable with Hares Drawings and Doodles to Auction

Bartholomaeus’s De proprietatibus rerum printed in Cologne in 1481 by Johanem koelhoff de lubeck leads Bellmans' Printed Books & Manuscripts sale on July 16 with an estimate of £3,000 -£5,000.

In his On the Properties of Things, Bartholomaeus Anglicus (c.1203-72)  - or Bartholomaeus de Glanville -  wrote about daily life with often amusing accounts of animals and children, but also helpful suggestions on how to set a table and give dinner. It was an early encyclopedia and hugely popular in the Middle Ages. Bartholomaeus clearly has a scientific interest in facts and phenomena and the book covers a huge range of subjects from God, angels and demons, mind and soul, to family life, medicine, the universe, geography and the natural world. 

This copy going under the hammer includes contemporary foliate pen flourishes which extend from some initials into the margins, as well as the scribe's doodles and several initials which are also decorated in the same hand, with a few incorporating human faces.

"Bartholomaeus’s De proprietatibus rerum includes some delightful drawings of hares, oak leaves and acorns," said Nicholas Worskett, book and manuscript specialist at Bellmans, "the kind of seemingly arbitrary scribe's 'doodles' sometimes found in the margins of medieval, but it’s the drawings of hares which add a great deal of charm to this copy." 

Other highlights from the sale include:

• a very fine copy of an engraved twin-hemisphere world map from the 16th century, most likely printed in  Antwerp in 1571, and renowned for its intriguing depiction of a coastline which roughly corresponds to the northern coast of Australia, long before that country's official European discovery by the Dutch in 1606 (estimate: £2,000-£3,000)
• a copy of De Indiæ utriusque re naturali et medica. Libri quatuordecum, Quorum contenta pagina sequens exhibet by Willem Piso (1611-78) and others, printed in Amsterdam in 1658 with three parts in one volume - this is the second, and significantly enlarged, edition of this work on the natural history and medicine of Brazil, based on the author's experience as a physician living in a Dutch settlement there from 1633 to 1644. Incorporated into the additional engraved pictorial title is an illustration of a dodo which may be among the last representations of a Dodo which could have been drawn 'from life' (estimate: £1,500-£2,500)
• a copy of a Nieuwe Cronyk Van Zeeland by Matthaeus Smallegange (1624-1710, editor and contributor) printed around 1696 in Amsterdam (estimate: £1,000-£1,500)
• an album of about 50 autograph letters and clipped signatures, and about 40 photographed portraits, many of the letters of Irish political interest, while among th celebrities are Daniel O'Connell (1775-1847), Benjamin Disraeli (1804-81) and Alfred, Lord Tennyson (estimate: £1,500-£2,500)