- Museum number
- 1889,0527.3
- Description
-
'The Florentine Picture-Chronicle' page from the album (recto of 1889,0527.4): Lamech holding a gigantic bow and Enoch transported to heaven on a cloud; below Tubal-cain holding a hammer, and putti surrounding a wreath with an inscription recording the end of the First Age
Pen and brown ink and brown wash over black chalk
- Production date
- 1470-1475 (circa)
- Dimensions
-
Height: 326 millimetres
-
Width: 226 millimetres
- $Inscriptions
-
- Curator's comments
- Watermark: Gothic R
Lamech at the top left married as his first wife Adah depicted at the top left of the left-hand page. He was the father of Jabal, Jubal (playing a lute on the lower right of the left-hand page) and Tubal-Cain depicted below. He holds a bow because of his boast that he has killed a man/boy for merely wounding or bruising him (Genesis IV: 23: 'And Lamech said unto his wives, Adah and Zillah, Hear my voice; ye wives of Lamech, hearken unto my speech: for I have slain a man to my wounding, and a young man to my hurt'). Enoch was the seventh patriarch (the male head of a family or clan) from creation (Genesis V: 21-4; 'And Enoch lived sixty and five years, and begat Methuselah: 22And Enoch walked with God after he begat Methuselah three hundred years, and begat sons and daughters: 23And all the days of Enoch were three hundred sixty and five years: 24And Enoch walked with God: and he was not; for God took him.'). Tubal-cain at the lower left was the son of Lamech and his second wife Zillah, half-brother of Jabal depicted nearest to him on the other page of the opening. He was known as a forger of all implements of copper and iron (Genesis IV: 22: 'And Zillah, she also bare Tubalcain, an instructer of every artificer in brass and iron: and the sister of Tubalcain was Naamah')
This page is probably not by the same hand responsible for the previous page. The ink is slighter darker than 1889,0527.1-2 and the way of drawing of figures also differs with the artist favouring shading with parallel hatching (as for example in the wings of the putti).
Lit: S. Colvin, 'A Florentine Picture Chronicle', London, 1898; A.E. Popham and P. Pouncey, 'Italian drawings in the BM, the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries', London, 1950, I, no. 274, II, pls. CCXXXVII-CCXLI.
For Popham & Pouncey 1950 entry see 1889,0527.1
- Location
- Not on display
- Exhibition history
-
BM, 'Padua in the 1450s', 1998, no. 16
- Acquisition date
- 1889
- Acquisition notes
- Popham & Pouncey 1950
The leaves of the book, in its present state, seem to be numbered 5 to 59 in a seventeenth(?)-century hand; the numbers, in the r.-hand top corner, have in many cases been partly trimmed away. The book was broken up by Ruskin, who was in the habit of lending parts of his books and manuscripts to friends and institutions in which he was interested, with the result that when the Museum purchased it from him in 1889 it contained only 49 folios. Of the remainder, two (1890,0314.1-4. Folios 13 and 14) were presented the next year by the trustees of the Ruskin Museum, Sheffield, and four (1900,0526.1-8. Folios 9, 22, 36, and 47) in 1900 by Ruskin's cousin, Mrs. Arthur Severn; folios 1 to 4 are missing, but there is nothing to indicate that they were not removed before Ruskin acquired the book.
- Department
- Prints and Drawings
- Registration number
- 1889,0527.3