Getty Museum Acquires 14th Century Manuscript

The J. Paul Getty Museum has acquired what officials said was one of the finest privately owned illuminated manuscripts by an artist from the 14th century.

“The Fates of Illustrious Men and Women” by Giovanni Boccaccio, illustrated by the so-called Boucicaut Master, includes painted miniatures in jewel-like colors and features tales of rulers and heroes such as Julius Caesar, Samson and Cleopatra.

Boccaccio was one of the earliest writers in the Italian language.

The Getty Boccaccio was owned by an aristocratic Scottish family for nearly 300 years and was auctioned in New York in 1932.

In 1980, it was auctioned from the library of a New York collector, reaching what was then a world-record price for an illuminated manuscript. Museum officials did not divulge what they paid for the Boccaccio.

It will be displayed in the new museum in the Getty Center, expected to open in 1997.

“This is a great moment for the Getty collections,” said John Walsh, director of the Malibu museum, adding that the manuscript is “a major book by an artist who was an outstanding figure in the history of Northern European painting.”

At 16 inches by 12 inches, the book is considered unusually large.

“The Boucicaut Master was an artist of genius and limitless invention,” said Thomas Kren, the Getty’s manuscripts curator. “He was a superb draftsman, a brilliant and original colorist and a conjurer of riveting and poetic images.”

He said the Boucicaut Master “helped lift the art of painting out of the Middle Ages and plant it firmly in the Renaissance.”