Cuttings from the Burckhardt-Wildt Album: Together Again

In the late eighteenth century, the Swiss dealer Peter Birmann assembled a monumental album of 475 miniatures, which he had removed from illuminated manuscripts. Named after the man to whom he sold the album, Daniel Burckhardt-Wildt (1752–1819), it remained in private hands for nearly two hundred years. In 1983, the album was sold at Sotheby’s, London. Prior to the auction, the album was dismembered, and its 475 cuttings were sold individually or in small groups.

At the time of the sale, the art-historical significance of these miniatures garnered attention from scholars and collectors alike. Contained within the album were cuttings from books of hours, psalters, bibles, and all manner of religious and secular texts–which had been inaccessible and virtually unknown to scholars while the album had remained in private hands. Of particular interest was a set of seventy-seven miniatures (five full-page miniatures and thirty-six double-sided, half-page miniatures) from a thirteenth-century French Apocalypse. Another notable revelation was a set of six miniatures cut from a fifteenth-century copy of a Speculum historiale (Mirror of History), in Portugal, which were previously thought to be lost.

The Morgan acquired a pair of double-sided miniatures from the Burckhardt-Wildt Apocalypse at the 1983 sale (MS M.1043.1–2). Two years later, another pair of miniatures from the set were donated to the Morgan (MS M.1071.1–2). In July of 2024, five of the six Speculum historiale miniatures were offered at auction by Sotheby’s, London (the sixth is currently held in the Cleveland Museum of Art, 1987.4). The Morgan acquired two cuttings from that sale (MS M.1251.1–2).

The recent acquisition of these two additional cuttings from the album provides an opportunity to reflect on its curious history.

How did the Burckhardt-Wildt Album come to be?

The upheavals of the French Revolution marked a dramatic shift in the socioeconomic hierarchy of France. Angry mobs exiled or executed many of the nobility, leaving their estates and possessions vulnerable to plunder. Power shifted away from religious leaders, leaving churches and monasteries equally vulnerable.

As private libraries were liquidated, the lavish illuminated manuscripts that had been commissioned by wealthy patrons found their way into the public market. These manuscripts were sold by the same system as any other book; based solely on weight with no regard for their ornamentation. It did not take long for enterprising dealers to realize that the illustrations in these books were artistically significant. A bookseller could hope to turn a small profit by selling one intact manuscript to an interested buyer. Or, he could simply cut out the miniature paintings contained within and sell those to many different individuals, thereby turning a greater profit.

Peter Birmann was one of the first dealers to specialize in illuminated manuscripts. The Swiss native began his career as a landscape painter. He traveled extensively throughout Europe, and especially loved to paint scenes from the countryside of Italy and France. Birmann found himself in Paris at the height of the French Revolution. One can only imagine how far removed the scenes unfolding outside of his Parisian window must have been from the idyllic scenes reflected in his own art.

Assembly of the album began in the early 1790s and was completed by 1796. There did not appear to be a particular system of organization in place, at least to the outside viewer. Even miniatures cut from the same manuscript were not placed in their original order.¹ Given this lack of organization, it might be assumed that Birmann had no intention of keeping these cuttings together. Within the album was an itemized list of prices for each of the individual miniatures.

By this point, Birmann had already established a relationship with the Basel-based merchant Daniel Burckhardt-Wildt. Burckhardt-Wildt and his wife, Margaretha Wildt (it was common for men in Switzerland at the time to add on their wife’s surname), were both born into wealthy families that had made their fortunes from silk ribbon production. The couple were both lovers of art, and together amassed a large collection that included paintings, sculptures, antiquities, and manuscripts. Burckhardt-Wildt agreed to purchase the album from Birmann for 444 livres tournois. It’s difficult to find an exact equivalence between currency from the French Revolution and the modern era, but to put it into perspective, this amount was slightly higher than what a skilled doctor would earn in a month.²

The Miniatures and their Origins:

Public interest in Apocalypses, manuscripts featuring text and illustrations from the Book of Revelation, rose steeply in Western Europe after a Calabrian abbot, Joaquin of Fiore, predicted that the world would end in the year 1260. Despite the failed prophecy, the demand for Apocalypses did not recede. This final book of the Bible sparked wonder and terror; its stories of wars, violence, heroes, fantastic beasts, and mythical lands echoed themes that were popular in many secular texts of the day, and provided a wealth of subjects for artists and illuminators. The Burckhardt-Wildt Apocalypse was produced in the last decade of the thirteenth century, likely in Lorraine, France. Such a lavish copy was most likely commissioned by a wealthy noble.

Each of the Morgan cuttings is illuminated on both the front and back sides. The text surrounding the miniatures was cut off and discarded, although tiny traces of text and the tops of decorated initials are occasionally visible in the surrounding borders. The imagery is taken directly from the Book of Revelation. Scenes depicted on the Morgan miniatures include men kneeling before an animalistic “false prophet” astride a seven-headed lion, a seven-headed dragon pursuing a fleeing woman, John the Evangelist standing before Christ, from whom flows the River of Life, and John beholding the gemstone-covered walls of New Jerusalem. Each miniature is painted in a bold color scheme using a dynamic array of reds, blues, greens, and oranges set against a patterned background.

Another set of six miniatures was cut from a fifteenth-century copy of the Speculum historiale. The text was written in the thirteenth century by Vincent of Beauvais (c.1184/94–c.1264), a Dominican friar. It provided a history of the world from the biblical Creation up to the Crusade of St. Louis in 1250 (funnily enough, a decade before the world was supposed to end, according to Joaquin of Fiore). The manuscript was likely commissioned by King René of Anjou (1409–80).

Bindings and text were frequently discarded after the miniatures were removed. Miraculously, the copy of the Speculum historiale survived, minus a good deal of decoration. Out of an original sixteen (presumed) miniatures, six were removed by Birmann, four remain in the volume, and the remaining six are unaccounted for. The manuscript is housed in the Biblioteca Nacional de Portugal (MS. il. 126). The four intact illuminations were studied in detail by Claude Schaefer in 1974. He attributed the illumination to the Master of Jouvenel des Ursins, one of the painters of King René of Anjou. In 1982, Eberhard König distinguished at least three artists among those grouped together by Schaefer, and gave the painter responsible for the Lisbon and Geneva manuscripts a new name: the Master of the Geneva Boccaccio.³

The first of the Morgan’s Speculum miniatures is the illustration for the opening of book III, depicting the finding of Moses and his subsequent presentation to Pharaoh. Pharaoh’s daughter and her handmaidens are shown in contemporaneous fifteenth-century costume, with the daughter in an especially fine royal blue dress. In the background, an adolescent Moses is presented to Pharaoh, who readily accepts him as a son, against the warnings of his advisor.

The second miniature is the opening for book XVI, illustrating King Anemur of India giving orders for the killing of Christian monks. King Anemur and his courtiers, in fine garments and with noticeably dark skin, look on as golden-armored soldiers attack the black-robed monks, some of whom can be seen fleeing in the background.

Birmann, Vandal or Savior?

Many of the ambitious dealers who acquired and cut up manuscripts during and after the French Revolution have been labeled vandals, and heavily criticized by historians for essentially destroying priceless manuscripts. However, at the time, the act of excising miniatures from manuscripts was not always seen in a negative light. Many dealers advertised the idea that these manuscripts had been “rescued” from storming troops and angry mobs. And in fact, many books and works of art were destroyed during this tumultuous period.

The silver lining in all of this is that the miniatures Birmann so carefully cut out and pasted into his album were ultimately preserved, and remain in relatively good condition. It is just as remarkable that the album remained in the Burkhardt-Wildt family, untouched, for so many years. Now that many of the cuttings are housed in public institutions, it is possible for researchers to study the material, and to share their discoveries with the world.

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Emerald J. Lucas
Belle da Costa Greene Curatorial Fellow
Medieval and Renaissance Manuscripts
The Morgan Library & Museum

Endnotes:

1. Prior to the 1983 auction, cataloguers at Sotheby’s attempted to arrange the miniatures in an order that was as close as possible to where they would have been found in their original manuscripts. The lots in the sale were numbered based on this analysis.
2. For insight into the economics of the French Revolution, see this page
3. König, Eberhard, Französische Buchmalerei um 1450: der Jouvenal-Maler, der Maler des Genfer Boccaccio, und die Anfänge Jean Fouquets, Berlin,1982