Art Collecting and Lineage in the Elizabethan Age: The Lumley Inventory. Roxburghe Club, 2010
EVANS Mark editor. (2010.)
£220.00
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Facsimile and Commentary on the Manuscript in the Possession of the Earl of Scarbrough. Folio. 168pp colour facsimile and 80 comparative illustrations. Red buckram. The Roxburghe Club,
The Lumley Inventory and Pedigree is the most important surviving document of Elizabethan visual culture.
The manuscript is owned by the Earls of Scarbrough and has long been on deposit at the Victoria and Albert Museum. It was compiled around 1590 for John, Baron Lumley (c.1533-1609), a pivotal figure between the Elizabethans with their enthusiasm for architecture and genealogy, and the Jacobeans with their love of books and artists. A Roman Catholic, Lord Lumley married the daughter of the 12th Earl of Arundel, and divided his time between his ancestral seat at Lumley Castle in County Durham and Nonsuch Palace in Surrey. Lacking an heir and excluded from a political role, Lumley directed his considerable energies into antiquarian pursuits, memorials, and the collecting activities that are spectacularly recorded in his Inventory.
As Sir Roy Strong writes in the Foreword, this publication fills 'a major lacuna in Elizabethan studies and one that could only satisfactorily be remedied by a team of scholars knowledgeable not only about painting but also genealogy, sculpture, furniture, interior decoration, heraldry, gardens and architecture'.
Mark Evans, Senior Curator of Paintings at the V&A, heads a team of fifteen leading scholars who have examined all aspects of this fascinating manuscript. The first part comprises an account of the contents of Lumley Castle, copies of verses and inscriptions displayed there, transcripts of deeds and other records related to the Lumleys, and four richly illuminated genealogical trees. It was Lord Lumley's fascination with pedigrees and portraits that elicited King James's famous quip, 'I didna ken Adam's ither name was Lumley'. The second part includes a series of drawings in ink, wash and watercolour of fountains and other garden ornaments at Nonsuch, marble-topped tables, the funerary monuments of Lumley and his wives at the nearby parish church in Cheam, and views of Lumley Castle.
The Inventory takes its name from its list of Lumley's collection of almost three hundred paintings, then one of the largest in existence, many of which are attributed to named artists and more than fifty of which are identifiable today, making it one of the most important surviving documentary sources for Tudor art and collecting.
This edition includes the first complete, full-scale colour facsimile of the text and decorated pages of the manuscript, together with twelve essays by fifteen leading authorities on Elizabethan art, patronage, collecting, heraldry, furniture and garden decoration, with more than eighty comparative illustrations, many in colour. It is more than ninety years since a transcript of the inventory alone was published by the Walpole Society, and this long-anticipated facsimile and in-depth scholarly appreciation is a major contribution to Renaissance studies. The large format of the publication is 44 x 30 cm. The book comprises 168 pages printed to the highest standard and bound in full buckram. This edition is privately printed for the Roxburghe Club, which has agreed to make 250 copies available for sale from Maggs Bros.
Contents: Foreword: Sir Roy Strong. The Lumley Inventory: Contents and Contexts. Mark Evans. Heraldry and Genealogies. Ann Payne. Lumley Castle & its Inventories. Susan Bracken & Maurice Howard. The Funeral Monuments. Nigel Llewellyn & Claire Gapper. Arms and Ancestors. The Lumley Horseman, Plantagenet Princes and Tudor Monarchs. Mark Evans. The Hall Screen, Lavabo and Mantelpiece. Tara Hamling. The Tables. Simon Swynfen Jervis. The Garden Ornaments. Paula Henderson. The Painters. Karen Hearn. The Portraits. Catharine MacLeod, Tarnya Cooper and Margaret Zoller. The Subject Pictures. Kathryn Barron. Facsimile of the Lumley Inventory. Appendix One: Description of the Lumley Inventory. Rowan Watson. Appendix Two: The Lumley Inventories. Lionel Cust. Reprinted from The Sixth Volume of the Walpole Society 1917-1918. Appendix Three: A List of Portraits in the Lumley Inventory. Catharine MacLeod, Tarnya Cooper & Margaret Zoller.
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Stock Code: 228246