Objects on view in J. Pierpont Morgan’s library reflect the past, present, and future of the collections in four curatorial departments, comprising illuminated manuscripts from the medieval and renaissance eras, five hundred years of printed books, literary manuscripts and correspondence, as well as printed music and autograph manuscripts by composers. These selections, which rotate three times a year, provide an opportunity for Morgan curators to spotlight individual items, to consider their historical and aesthetic contexts, and to tell the stories behind these artifacts and their creators. The rotation currently on view features items that complement the exhibition Belle da Costa Greene: A Librarian's Legacy. The selection showcases Greene’s acquisitions and demonstrates her intensive research into the collection and wide-ranging intellectual interests. Additional objects relate to literary and theatrical works that address themes reflective of her life, including racial passing. A special highlight is the last known photograph of Greene, taken in the West Room in 1950.
Belle da Costa Greene in the West Room of J. Pierpont Morgan’s Library, 1950, gelatin silver print. Biblioteca Berenson, I Tatti, the Harvard University Center for Italian Renaissance Studies; Bernard and Mary Berenson Papers
Carlo Urbino (ca. 1510–1585), Le regole di disegno (Codex Huygens), ca. 1560–70, autograph manuscript, purchased in 1938; 2006.14:15
AT THE SEAT OF POWER
After Belle Greene’s retirement in 1948, she continued coming to the Library to work on various projects, usually in the print room. But for this late portrait, which would be her last, she sat at Morgan’s desk and turned the pages of one of her final manuscript acquisitions. She told Bernard Berenson she was writing a biography of the Morgans, perhaps a continuation of the work she started many decades earlier on J. Pierpont Morgan as a collector. Though her biography was never published and is presumed lost, her tireless work to build the Morgan Library’s collection and make it accessible to scholars and the public has lasted as her most enduring legacy.
AFTER LEONARDO
Compiled and illustrated in Milan based on writings by Leonardo da Vinci, this incomplete treatise on proportion and perspective was one of the few autograph manuscripts acquired by the Morgan during the Great Depression. As Belle Greene notes in her description for the 1936–40 Pierpont Morgan Library report, the artist “was so intimately acquainted with the original drawings and notebooks of Leonardo da Vinci that a number of leaves contain faithful copies. . . . In sixteen of these cases, the copies are of lost originals, hence their documentary value amounts almost to that of a primary source.” The figure here, demonstrating the proportions of the human body similar to da Vinci’s “Vitruvian Man,” is one of several drawings in the 128-page manuscript.
Ignatius Sancho (1729–1780), Letter to Laurence Sterne (1713–1768), July 21, 1766, copy of Sancho’s original letter, in Sterne’s hand, purchased by J. Pierpont Morgan, 1897; MA 417.10
Rebecka Eames (1641–1721), Petition to Sir William Phipps [i.e., Phips], Governor of Massachusetts, December 5, 1692, autograph manuscript, purchased in 1943; MA 1184
“MY CHIEF PLEASURE HAS BEEN BOOKS”
Born into slavery, freed by a noble family, and eventually enriched by a successful grocery business, Ignatius Sancho was one of the most celebrated letter writers in eighteenth-century Britain. His fame was secured in 1775 with the publication of this letter, addressed to the popular novelist Laurence Sterne, in which Sancho praised The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy, Gentleman (1759–67) and thanked the author for the abolitionist sentiment in one of his sermons. On this page Sancho recalls the forced illiteracy imposed by his former enslavers and the “little reading and writing [he] got by unwearied application.” Belle Greene studied and annotated this letter, as seen in her pencil notes below the page.
A WITCH HUNT SURVIVOR
Imprisoned for four months and condemned to die, Rebecka Eames wrote this petition seeking “a Pardon of my life, not diserving [sic] death by man for witchcraft or any other sin.” She previously testified that she had seen the devil and fallen under his thrall, baptizing her son in his name and “afflicting” the townsfolk. But here she claims these statements were “altogether false and untrue, I being hurried out of my senses by ye afflicted persons Abigall Hobbs and Mary Lacye . . . saying they knew me to be an old witch and If I would not confesse it I should very speedily be hanged.” Eames was eventually pardoned. Belle Greene was proud of this acquisition, which appeared in the 1949 exhibition organized in her honor.
Dorothy Miner (1904–1973), editor, Studies in Art and Literature for Belle da Costa Greene Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1954, Archives of the Morgan Library & Museum; ARC 3283
Charles W. Chesnutt (1858–1932), The House Behind the Cedars, Boston: Houghton, Mifflin, 1900, purchased on the Gordon N. Ray Fund, 2024; PML 199107
A FITTING TRIBUTE
Near the end of Belle Greene’s life, her friends and colleagues planned to compile a Festschrift, or tribute volume, in her honor. Due to Greene’s failing health, the book was not published during her lifetime, but in 1954 the massive volume of fifty-one essays finally appeared, presenting contributions by an impressive roster of Greene’s former colleagues. The wide variety of scholarship across various disciplines—particularly art history, bibliography, and manuscript studies—reflected her intellectual curiosity and range. In her foreword the Walters Art Gallery curator and Greene protégé Dorothy Miner noted that the volume is not prefaced by a biography of Greene, though in a nearby quote she describes in compelling fashion what tales such a biography would tell.
HOUSE BEHIND THE CEDARS
Charles Chesnutt’s novel The House Behind the Cedars reflects the complexity of the color line in a post–Civil War United States. Chesnutt is known for his realistic portrayal of mixed-race characters who often reject expectations of race, gender, and class. Through the character Rena Walden, a light-skinned Black woman who passes as white with her brother, Chesnutt explores themes of racial passing, interracial marriage, and constructions of identity in the postbellum South. Imagining the social and economic possibilities available to passing characters while also describing their personal tribulations, the novel was adapted by director Oscar Micheaux in a now-lost 1927 film, remade in 1932 under the title Veiled Aristocrats.
Wooden medallion with the mark of William Caxton (ca. 1422–1491), New York, 1959, Archives of the Morgan Library & Museum; ARC 3250.11
Bound for Guglielmo Libri (1803–1869), Alexis Berg (act. 1850s–62), art conservator, Commentaries on Canon Law, in Latin, Germany, ca. 1250–75, purchased by J. Pierpont Morgan in 1905 or 1906; MS M.561, front cover
REMEMBERING GREENE
In 1959 sixteen wooden medallions featuring the devices (personal insignia) of early and modern printers were installed at the Morgan in honor of Belle Greene. The installation was underwritten by the Hroswitha Club, a members-only bibliophilic organization for women active from 1944 to 2004, named after the German writer and canoness Hrotsvitha of Gandersheim (ca. 935–973). Greene was a founding honorary member of the club and in 1948 offered her fellow Hroswithans a tour of the Morgan: as recalled in meeting minutes, “she kindly said that we had full freedom to enter the vaults and examine the treasures at will.” The medallions were removed in a later construction project and are now preserved in the Morgan Archives.
NOT WHAT IT SEEMS
Wary of tricks from unscrupulous art dealers, Belle Greene was constantly suspicious about the authenticity of potential acquisitions. In a pencil note on the inside cover of this volume, she registers her concerns about the binding: “assembled as covers of this manuscript much later??” This manuscript was once owned by the Italian professor of mathematics and expert paleographer Guglielmo Libri—one of the nineteenth century’s most notorious book collectors and dealers. Some of the historical bindings he sold were doctored pastiches, with their components cobbled together using a mix of authentic and counterfeit sources by the book and art conservator Alexis Berg. In this instance, Greene’s hunch was correct; the pastiche binding has no historical connection to the manuscript it now adorns.
Miscellany, Egypt, Touton scriptorium (Faiyum region), before 895, purchased for J. Pierpont Morgan in 1911; MS M.577, fols. 1v–2r
“Psalter-Hours of Ghuiluys de Boisleux,” France, Arras, ca. 1243–46, purchased from the Holford estate, 1927; MS M.730, fols. 126v–127r
COPTIC MANUSCRIPTS
Found buried in a stone vat near the Egyptian village of Hamuli in 1910, the library of the otherwise unknown Monastery of Saint Michael contained fifty Coptic (Egyptian Christian) manuscripts and bindings from the ninth and tenth centuries. In 1911 Belle Greene oversaw negotiations to acquire the collection, which she had been anxious to bring to America ever since the discovery. Greene spent years working with Father Henri Hyvernat (Catholic University of America) to restore and catalogue the manuscripts. She formed a close professional friendship with Hyvernat, viewing him as a confidant and father figure. “She is very much like Mr. Morgan,” Hyvernat once said of Greene, “and knows her own mind.”
A NOBLE FRENCH DEVOTIONAL BOOK
This lavishly decorated manuscript is one of several spectacular acquisitions that Belle Greene made at the sale of George Holford’s collection in 1927. A combination of a Psalter and Book of Hours, this volume was made for Ghuiluys de Boisleux, a French noblewoman with familial connections to the House of Burgundy. Interspersed throughout the Psalter portion is a series of full-page miniatures depicting the life of King David, author of the Psalms; at right are scenes of David and his son Absalom. In her description of the manuscript, Greene cites Sydney Cockerell, whose scholarship she much admired: “The style of the pictures is altogether unusual . . . and it is difficult to recall any book at all resembling this one.”
Antonio Cornazzano (1429–1484), Del modo di regere e di regnare (Of the method of ruling and reigning), Italy, Ferrara, ca. 1478–79, purchased by J. P. Morgan Jr. in 1927; MS M.731, fols. 2v–3r
Raoul Lefèvre (act. 1460), Recuyell of the Historyes of Troye (Retelling of the histories of Troy), Ghent?: David Aubert?, for William Caxton, ca. 1473–74, purchased with the Amherst Collection, 1908; PML 771
WOMEN IN LEADERSHIP
Belle Greene acquired medieval and literary manuscripts created by women as well as books that symbolized the power of prominent female rulers throughout history. This manuscript was made for such a woman. Written in silver ink and adorned with a full-page miniature of its patron, this verse treatise on the conduct of rulers was dedicated to the Duchess of Ferrara, Eleanor of Aragon (1450–1493). Eleanor was a strong-willed, highly educated woman and a major patron of the arts in northern Italy, and she served as regent when her husband went off to battle. Greene acquired this manuscript at the Holford sale, only three years after her own promotion to a leadership position as director of the Pierpont Morgan Library.
THE FIRST CAXTON
“This is the first book printed by Caxton . . . and the first book printed in the English language.” Belle Greene’s pencil note inside this volume’s front cover records its special place in English printing history. It was the crown jewel of the sixteen Amherst Caxtons, owned by William Tyssen-Amherst, first Baron Amherst of Hackney. Greene famously outwitted other curators and dealers to acquire the set en bloc. Her feat was publicized in newspapers on both sides of the Atlantic: “I just have to have it,” she said in an interview about the acquisition, “that expression is more or less me. I just have to accomplish what I set out to do, regardless of who or what is in my way.”
Dante Alighieri (1265–1321), La Commedia (The Divine Comedy), Mantua: Georgius de Augusta and Paulus de Butzbach, for Columbinus Veronensis, 1472, purchased in 1929; PML 26247
Valentin Haüy (1745–1822), Essai sur l’éducation des aveugles (Essay on the Education of the Blind), Paris: M. Clousier, 1786, purchased in 1933; PML 29561
THE MISSING DANTE
One of the earliest appearances of The Divine Comedy in print, this book, from the rare third edition, is embellished with “three large illuminated initial letters in gold, upon a floreated background,” as Belle Greene described it. The first three editions of Dante’s epic poem were each produced in 1472 by three different printers across Italy. When this copy went up for auction in Milan in 1929, Greene jumped at the chance to fill in a major collection gap (the Library already owned the first two editions). After her successful bid Greene pronounced that the Library “is now in the distinguished position of possessing all three of them [the Dante editions] in perfect condition.”
LITERACY FOR ALL
Belle Greene acquired several important printed “firsts,” including the first book published for the use and instruction of the blind. In 1785 Valentin Haüy founded the Institute for Blind Youth in France, which was the first school of its kind and operated free to the community. Offering educational opportunities for children, the institute provided a curriculum as well as programs in manual work. His students learned to read using a system of raised embossed lettering that Haüy developed after noticing the heightened sense of touch among the blind community. Haüy’s student Louis Braille would adapt this into braille, a tactile writing system for the blind.
Alain Locke (1885–1954), editor, The New Negro: An Interpretation, New York: Albert and Charles Boni, 1925, purchased on the Carter Burden Fund, 2012; PML 195844
Pudd’nhead Wilson’s Calendar for 1894, [New York: Century, 1893], purchased in 1934; PML 30089
THE NEW NEGRO
Alain Locke’s anthology of fiction, poetry, and essays on African and African American art and literature was a landmark publication of the Harlem Renaissance, featuring some of the most notable names from the New Negro movement. Artwork and graphic design by Winold Reiss, a white, German American artist known for his portraits of Harlem residents, supplement the text. Locke hailed Reiss’s nuanced depictions of Harlem community members and avoidance of stereotypes. The volume’s frontispiece, The Brown Madonna, depicts a graceful Black mother and uses overt Christian references, highlighting the book’s aim to promote racial uplift and express the community’s dignity
THE TRAGEDY OF PUDD’NHEAD WILSON
Mark Twain’s novel, first serialized in Century magazine, tells the story of two boys switched at birth—one a white aristocrat, the other an enslaved child of mixed Black and white ancestry. The indeterminate race of the latter, who is called Chambers, allows him to pass as the white man Tom Driscoll, highlighting the power of mixed-race characters to self-determine their identity. But as in many passing narratives, the characters in Twain’s book come to the unfortunate realization that they are not in control of how the world views them. Each chapter of the novel begins with an aphorism attributed to Pudd’nhead Wilson’s “calendar.” To promote the serialized novel, the Century Company published under a fictional imprint this small format calendar, distributing it to bookstores and newsstands.
Giacomo Puccini (1858–1924), La Bohème, act 4 (sketches), autograph manuscript, December 12, 1895; The Dannie and Hettie Heineman Collection, gift of the Heineman Foundation, 1977; Heineman MS 173B
LA BOHÈME
Though this manuscript sketch from La Bohème entered the collection many years after Belle Greene’s tenure at the Morgan, it would have held personal interest since it was one of her favorite operas. In 1910 she wrote to Bernard Berenson about going to see a performance at New York City’s New Theatre, describing it as “an opera which I hate because I love it so,” a work that unites the audience in their mutual experience of the characters’ emotions: “by the end of the evening I am invariably desperately enamoured of the man who sits next me [sic], be he old or young, black or white, lame, halt or blind—n’importe-qui!— Such is Bohème.” Puccini signed this manuscript and added a doodled self-portrait.
Collections Spotlight is funded in perpetuity in memory of Christopher Lightfoot Walker.