The Rosary Cantoral

The Rosary Cantoral is a large (103 vellum folios, each about 38 inches tall and 24 inches wide), very richly illuminated chant manuscript acquired by the Beinecke Library at Yale University in 1989. Its provenance is mysterious and has been confounded further by alterations to its original structure, the presence of a number of more or less similar leaves scattered in libraries and private collections around the world, and a number of conflicting theories about almost every element in the puzzle. Lorenzo Candelaria's solution occupies his first chapter, which lacks only murder to make it a first-class thriller as it takes us deep into the world of rare book dealers, wealthy collectors, the libraries that depend on them both, and the bits of disparate and questionable information that need to come together to transform a mere beautiful artifact into a source of cultural understanding. I really hate to spoil the story for anyone out there, but since Candelaria puts it in his title, it probably does no harm to reveal here that the manuscript was made around 1500 for the Convent of San Pedro Mrtir in Toledo

Art · Art history · Humanities · The Renaissance · Historical and Religious Studies of Rome · Latin American history and culture · Libraries, Manuscripts, and Books