We haven’t finished talking about him… Henry VIII’s book is on the bench for some treatment

Henry VIII of England continues to attract attention. This time it is not about one of his many wives but about a book he wrote, the very book which granted him the title of Defender of the Faith, a title still assigned to British Sovereigns today. Henry VIII was a highly educated man and in the years before he turned against the Pope and the Church of Rome, he wrote a treatise called The Defence of the Seven Sacraments against Luther. The book is a theological treatise, dedicated to Pope Leo X, defending the Catholic Church against Martin Luther’s attack on Indulgences, and was printed in London in 1521.

The Fitzwilliam Museum’s copy

The Fitzwilliam Museum’s copy of the book is one of 27 copies that were sent to Rome by Henry to be distributed among the Cardinals of the Church after approbation by the Pope1. As we are currently working towards an exhibition on Money, Image, and Power in Tudor and Stuart England (spring 2019), the book was brought up to the conservation studio, and this is when the exciting detective work started. In fact, the book has a number of interesting physical features which I tried to unravel, helped by my curatorial and conservation colleagues Suzanne Reynolds and Edward Cheese, in order to choose the most appropriate conservation treatment and extract as much information as possible about its history.

The authentic features

I was able to validate several authentic features of our copy, the large signature of Henry VIII at the beginning and end of the text being the most obvious evidence. The sixteenth-century full leather binding is blind-stamped with the Royal arms and the Tudor rose in a double panel. These stamps are attributed to the London binder John Reynes2 and prove the authenticity of the binding. The title page is decorated with an elaborate woodcut border designed by Hans Holbein (1497-1543) which has been recorded by Gordon as part of the original features of the first edition of the treatise3.

Front board before treatment
Title page
Other features

Other features bear witness of the life of this copy and tell us about its owners, its condition and its uses.

Signs on the binding

The front board shows an inscription that has been scratched in the leather. We can read REX ANGLIAE IN LVTH meaning “The King of England against Luther”. The foredge has been inscribed with the title, along with an intriguing sign. This symbol is hard to identify and we came up with two suggestions of what it could be: a cross-bearing orb or a pomegranate. Please get in touch if you have seen this sign used on other books – there are possible links to Queen Catherine of Aragon.

Inscription on the front board
Sign on the foredge
Inside the book

The pages have been numbered by hand, and the running titles have also been added by hand by a reader comfortable with the Latin of the text, using an elegant humanistic script. This reader also annotated the text extensively.

Annotated page
The front pastedown

A nineteenth-century manuscript note on paper is adhered to the front pastedown. It is signed by Samuel Woodburn (1780/5-1853, art dealer and expert on Old Master Drawings) who explains that he bought the book from Signor Romanis at Rome in 1818. Napoleon’s invasion of Rome (1798) had a powerful impact on the Vatican Library as well as its manuscripts. Book dealers coming from England and other countries followed the army and acquired many books and illuminated cuttings. If Samuel Woodburn’s note is true, the book was purchased by Signor Romanis when several of the books belonging to the late Pope were sold by order of the French Army.

Samuel Woodburn’s note on the front pastedown
Remains of a former reback

One final feature. When removing the existing leather spine repair, blind-tooled brown leather remains were found underneath the original leather along the joints, suggesting a former reback. The patterns that are still visible indicate that the leather came from a fairly large late fifteenth – or early sixteenth-century binding with a central panel of triple-lined lozenges framed by foliate ornaments. The stamp used for these ornaments and the style of the layout is very similar to one recorded by Basil Oldham in English Blind-Stamped Bindings4, confirming the date of the re-used leather.

Blind-tooled brown leather remains
Features identified in Basil J. Oldham’s book
Conservation treatment

Let’s get on with some conservation treatment now!

The book was in fairly poor condition. It had been rebacked at least twice and the last reback was creating tensions to the book. Boards were distorted, corners were worn, the front endleaves were detaching, the large strip of glassine paper supposed to support the title page was falling off and the pages were dirty and torn around the edges. There was definitely room for improvement!

Here are the illustrated stages of the conservation treatment:

Removing the current reback, removing the thick layer of hard animal glue from the spine, and reinforcing the sewing with Japanese paper linings in the panels and linen braids over the sewing supports.

The glassine paper was removed mechanically.

Tears were repaired and losses filled with toned Western and Japanese papers.

Corners were reinforced and reconstructed. They were then covered with toned archival leather.

The waste parchment guard hooked around the front endpapers was cleaned so that the thirteenth-century manuscript writing could be revealed.

Margins were cleaned with a smoke-sponge. New back-bead endbands were sewn to reinforce the sewing. The detached leaves were guarded with Japanese paper strips and sewn back on to the textblock over the extended sewing supports using linen thread.

Boards were re-attached using the extended sewing supports. Finally, the book was rebacked with toned archival leather and housed in a bespoke drop-spine box.

Thanks to this collaborative detective work and the conservation treatment that followed, the book is now stable and well documented, available to researchers and ready to go on display!

Special thanks to Assistant Keeper Suzanne Reynolds for all her help in untangling the many mysteries of the book and bringing academic support to the project.

 

 

When fashion transforms the truth

As part of Cambridge’s Festival of Ideas 2017, I took part in a series of behind-the-scenes talks on how we investigate the ‘true’ nature of museum objects. As the event was so successful and attendees showed a lot of interest in the subject, this blog post is aiming to share the story of the objects I discussed on that occasion.

What secrets or lies can we unveil, by which means can we do that, and how far can we go into our understanding of past practices? Some objects lead us into exciting journeys and this is the case of two manuscripts fragments from our collection (MSS 293a and 293b1).

MS 293a (432 x 402 mm)
MS 293b (356 x 376 mm)

These two beautiful and quite peculiar illuminated fragments come from the Royal Monastery of St Thomas in Avila, Spain, and were presented by the Friends of the Fitzwilliam Museum in 1918. By taking different approaches – those of a curator, a conservator and a research scientist – to investigate the truth of these objects, we can retrace their story and reveal some of their secrets.

Historical context and iconography

The description of the image is the first step in our investigation and already gives a lot of information. First we can see that the main part of each image is a large letter: we can identify an ‘M’ and a ‘D’. These are enclosed within composite floral borders containing birds, animals and grotesques, as well as the arms of Castile and Aragon and the devices of the Spanish sovereigns Ferdinand and Isabella, the yoke and the bundle of arrows respectively.

Questions arise already and we start wondering what text these two initials introduced, from which manuscript(s) the images were excised, and what is their context. The catalogue description 2 suggests that the initial ‘M’ would have introduced Psalm 131 (the first psalm for Thursday Vespers) and the initial ‘D’ would have introduced Psalm 114 (the first psalm for Monday Vespers). This type of initial, “shaped and surrounded by densely populated foliage on highly burnished gold grounds, contained within frames inscribed with phrases from the accompanying text”, is, according to our curator Dr Stella Panayotova, “representative of Castilian illumination of the last quarter of the fifteen century which agrees with the internal evidence of the royal arms and devices.” The presence of the arms of Castile and Aragon as well as Ferdinand and Isabella’s devices does indeed give us a lot of information about the time of creation of these images. The two kingdoms of Castile and Aragon were united by this royal couple in 1479; in 1492, the pomegranate (not present here) was added to the royal arms to mark the conquest of Granada. We can therefore conclude that these images were created between 1479 and 1492.

Looking more carefully, we notice the strange layout of the borders. We can see that some of the animals are upside down and some of the drawings are incomplete. We are also aware that this sort of image with such large borders so closely attached to the large initials on all four sides is not commonly seen in illuminated manuscripts. Also, we have two large initials but no other text, so we start asking questions about what happened to these objects and how and why such images came to look the way they do today. At this point we have to start looking ‘beyond’ the image, at the materiality of the object: what is it made of and how can we explain the size and composition of the images?

Conservator’s approach

Last year MS 293a arrived at the conservation studio because it needed some treatment. The fragment was lined with cardboard which was acidic and causing tensions in the parchment. Both of these features were damaging the object.

MS 293a, backing cardboard
MS 293a under raking light

When MS 293a arrived at the conservation studio I followed the usual starting procedure of figuring out what I was dealing with. The catalogue description of the object gave me a good idea of the date of the illumination fragment and its iconography, but very little was written about its materiality.

Using raking light was the most effective observation method to understand the composition of the object. We can see the texture of the surface, giving information about the thickness of the paint layers and the way gold was applied. Raking light also highlights the presence of separate pieces of parchment. So not only is this a fragment from an illuminated manuscript, but it is an assemblage, a collage of several fragments. This explains the very complex completed image, acting as an individual painting.

MS 293a under raking light

Cutting illuminated manuscripts to create new ‘beautiful’ images was a fairly common practice in the 19th century and demonstrates the changing attitudes towards illuminations over time. Mid-19th century revival of interest in Gothic art led to the invasive exploitation of illuminated manuscripts where illuminations were cut and reused in a different context and format: MS 293a was assembled to stand as a painting. It is, as Stella Panayotova writes in the catalogue of the COLOUR exhibition, “a damage inflicted upon illuminated manuscripts, motivated paradoxically, by admiration for them as works of art”.

Backing removal

As mentioned before, the collage was supported by an acidic cardboard. It had been glued with animal glue and stuck firmly onto the board.

The illuminated cutting is painted on parchment which is made of animal skin and is both a very durable but also very reactive material. Parchment becomes stiff over time and reacts hugely to the relative humidity of the surrounding air so tensions can appear when the parchment is forced into a certain shape. My task was to remove the backing and mount the object to keep it safe and stable.

I had to remove the backing board layer by layer in order to reduce the risk of distorting the illumination which could disturb the paint layers. During the process the collage was laid onto a large piece of felt so that the illumination was not crushed. A thin layer of paper was found at the back of the collage and was probably the sheet of paper on which the pieces of the collage were originally adhered. We decided to leave it in place in case removing it would loosen the pieces. However, getting so close to the back of the illumination was intriguing so we looked at the object with transmitted light (now that it was fairly thin) and were able to make out large black Gothic letters. These letters are written on the back of the initial fragment. This was a magical moment and confirmed that the initial belonged to a very large manuscript.

MS 293a backing removal
MS 293a backing removal
MS 293a through transmitted light after backing removal

We had already so much information and could be fairly confident in attributing the illuminated initials to a Choir Psalter, written in Latin and originating from Avila in Spain in the late 15th century.

We also found out via observations under natural light and raking light that the collages were made of 8 fragments (MS293a) and 3 fragments (MS293b) respectively. Our curator was fairly confident in attributing the floral borders to the same illuminated manuscript as the initials. We could now go further in our understanding of the object and being able to reveal how the ‘artist’ who made the collage achieved the final composition. This is where our research scientist comes in.

Scientific approach

Collaboration with Dr Paolo Romano and Claudia Caliri from the LANDIS Laboratory in Catania (LNS-INFN and IBAM-CNR), allowed us to analyse MS 293a with a cutting-edge macro-XRF scanner, which they shipped here all the way from Italy! The spectral images obtained were interpreted by our research scientist and here is what they revealed:

The elemental map for iron (Fe-K) shows the presence of iron in various areas. The obvious place where we can see iron is in the gilded areas because iron is a constituent of Armenian bole, which would have been used as the ground layer for the application of gold leaf. However, we can also see what appear to be letters throughout the centre of the image. By flipping the image over (see image below) and adjusting its contrast we realise that these are indeed letters, written in iron-gall ink on the other side of this parchment page. Careful observation allows us to start reading the text hidden behind the collage.

MS 293b, elemental map for iron (Fe-K) flipped left-to-right

The false-colour elemental map for zinc, chromium and cobalt (in red, green and blue, respectively ) reveals the presence of elements, all of which are characteristic of ‘modern’ pigments. Combining this information with other analytical data, we can identify the presence of zinc white, cobalt blue, barium chromate and a chromium-based green, all of which were first manufactured in the first half of the 19th century. This information, together with the absence of any pigments manufactured after 1850, suggests that the collage was assembled, and the image retouched, probably in the 1840s, in line with the 19th-century practice of excising illuminations from manuscripts to create new art objects.

MS 293a, false-colour elemental map for zinc, chromium and cobalt
Conclusion

Collaboration between curator, scientist and conservator helped to retrace the origins and the story of these collages and to document them. These objects are new valuable objects, made of ancient valuable fragments. We won’t undo the collages because they document historic practice on top of being a new artwork. Besides, there is currently no parent manuscript so re-uniting the fragments is not possible – and if it was, digital methods could allow us to reunite fragments from all over the world by use of online digital tools, for example the IIIF (International Image Interoperability Framework). Separating the pieces could also damage the parchment and the paint layers, and having individual fragments without a specific place or use for them wouldn’t be appropriate.

Revealing the truths of an object is so important because we can’t undo what has been done for various reasons explained previously. However, we can document the object and share the information. One day, perhaps, through sharing information, we will find more related fragments that will feed into our understanding of the object itself and the historical practices involved and we may even be able to start reconstructing the illuminated manuscript that was once proudly standing in the Royal Monastery of St Thomas in Avila.

 

MS 197 (578 x 400 mm)

This cutting from our collection gives an idea of the scale of a Choir Plaster and how the fragments of the collage could have been laid out on a page. This is MS 197, from a 15th-century Italian Choir Book (see catalogued information’s here). We can see the large initial, the floral borders, the coat of arm and large black manuscript letters.

 

With special acknowledgement to Dr Paola Ricciardi, Fitzwilliam Museum’s Research Scientist, for her input with scientific research and imaging and for her help with co-writing this blog post.

 

 

The challenges of use and display

Books in a museum context have the particular challenge of being objects of study as well as objects of display. The beautifully decorated leather bindings which make the Founder’s Library such a grand historic interior also hold contents of great interest and therefore serve several purposes, both decorative and functional.

To commemorate the 400 years since the death of William Shakespeare, a small exhibition was put together last year at the Fitzwilliam Museum: ‘All the world’s a stage’: Shakespeare in Publication and Performance. Two of the books chosen1 to be displayed had loose or detached boards as well as worn corners and endcaps which would have affected their display. After consultation between the curator and the conservators, we decided to undertake conservation treatment firstly for the books to be displayed safely and look cared for but also, in a much bigger scale, to restore their flexibility and allow them to be consultated safely by readers.

Both books are second impressions of William Shakespeare’s work, printed in 1632. They are now in an early 19th century binding. The beautifully decorated bindings were covering a poorly made structure as some 19th century practices are known to put more importance into the aesthetic of the book rather than its mechanical function. The ’Russia calf’ leather used for the covering of the binding had become brittle over time due to its acidic nature. Joints are usually the first area to break down as they are subject to a lot of stress.

broken joint
Broken joint
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Brittle leather

We had two weeks prior to the exhibition to restore and even improve the accessibility of the content of the books by re-attaching the loose boards in a flexible and durable way. Re-attaching boards can be done in many ways and these books provide a good example of two different techniques we use.

The possibility to lift the gilded spine or not usually determines which technique we will use. If the spine is fairly easy to lift without falling into pieces, we will go for a re-back2, otherwise, we will reduce the lifting to a minimum and insert small strips of cloth underneath patches of leather. For the first book, the spine could be lifted so we decided to do a re-back.

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Cleaning the spine after lifting the original leather
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New endbands

After lifting the leather spine from the book and cleaning the spine from residues of old brittle glue, a wide strip of aerolinen3 was adhered to the spine. The aerolinen was then stuck with paste and EVA4 in the previously split boards in order to re-attach them to the text-block.

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Lifting the leather along the joints with a knife
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Adhere a hollow on the spine

The leather on the boards was lifted away along the spine edge and trimmed along the gold- tooled line. A hollow back5 made of Heritage Archival pHotokraft paper was adhered onto the spine and the book was re-backed with new toned leather.

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Re-back with new piece of toned leather

The original spine was then re-adhered onto the book and the missing areas on the spine leather were filled with Japanese paper and toned with acrylic paint to match the leather on the spine.

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After re-adhering the original leather on the spine
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After treatment

 

This treatment should be very long-lasting as the joints are now supported with aerolinen and new leather. Endcaps have also been restored in the process of re-backing and the original spine is now well supported.

The second book was quite another story. The leather was too brittle for the whole spine to be lifted away without losing the decoration and the sewing was in good condition which means that the spine didn’t need to be treated. Therefore, the leather was only lifted along the edges of the panels to allow tabs of aerolinen to be adhered to the spine and onto the boards to form a strong but flexible attachment.

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Aerolinen tabs extending from the joint
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Re-attaching the board

When these repairs were dry the original leather was readhered with a mixture of EVA and wheat-starch paste. The joints were then covered by a thin strip of Japanese paper6 to prevent slight cracks from developing. Paper repair patches were toned in situ using Golden’s acrylic paints and the whole binding was furbished with two light coats of Renaissance microcrystalline wax

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Adhering a strip of Japanese paper along the joint
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After treatment

This treatment is very efficient as it is much less time-consuming than a re-back but strong enough to hold the boards to the book when the rest of the binding is in good condition.

Both books have kept their aesthetical value which is extremely important in the context of historic libraries. They will still be able to fulfil their decorative role as well as being accessible and available for researchers and readers.

Welcome!

Welcome to the Fitzwilliam Museum Conservation and Collections Care Blog!

light-measuring

The Fitzwilliam Museum has studios for the conservation of antiquities, applied arts, manuscripts and printed books, and works of art on paper and a scientific laboratory to carry out analysis on the collection. The Museum’s paintings are conserved at The Hamilton Kerr Institute, which is also a department of the Museum.

Conservators at the Fitzwilliam Museum work alongside curators, researching and investigating the materials and technology of the objects. They assess and record condition and undertake conservation treatment where necessary. The other important part of conservation work is collections care. This includes all the actions taken to avoid damage and slow down deterioration of the objects by controlling the environment around them.

Read more about the Fitzwilliam Museum.

Read more about Conservation and Collections Care at the Fitzwilliam Museum.