Treasures From the Vault at the Morgan Library

The first real images most Europeans saw of the New World were maps published three years after Hernán Cortés’s conquest of the Valley of Mexico. Two such sixteenth-century maps are on view, depicting the capital of the Nahuatl (Aztec) civilization, Tenochtitlan—complete with Moctezuma’s palace and a public zoo—and the Gulf of Mexico, marking the first time Florida is named on a map.

For over three hundred years, Books of Hours were a popular means of assisting the faithful with their devotions, teaching children to read, and recording family histories. Some small and precious Books of Hours, however, functioned less like a book and more like a piece of jewelry. The ornamental quality of the sixteenth-century manuscript on view—illuminated by Simon Bening, the last and greatest Flemish illuminator of that century—was enhanced two centuries later when its owner commissioned its elaborate, detachable gilt silver filigree binding.

Thomas Cromwell, chief minister to King Henry VIII, contrived the king’s marriage to Anne of Cleves. In Cromwell’s letter to Sir Nicholas Wotton, the king’s ambassador in Cleves, he urged him to “use therfor ye Wisedom and Dexteritie herin to satisfie his [Majestry] accordingly.” The marriage was a disaster and led to Cromwell’s execution for treason and heresy.  

Presented for the first time is a significant recent music acquisition, a newly identified copyist manuscript for the music of Domenico Scarlatti and Antonio Soler, both of whom were in service to the Spanish court of Maria Bárbara. Because no autograph manuscripts of Scarlatti’s or Soler’s music survive, copyist manuscripts that can be definitively linked with the composers carry great importance. The piece on view by Scarlatti was dubbed The Cat’s Fugue because the opening, dissonant theme skips about as if a cat were walking upon the keys.

The first edition of Laurence Sterne’s The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy, Gentleman, was published in nine volumes, two of which are on view. As Sterne himself noted in a letter to actor David Garrick, the first two volumes had “made a great noise” and the author tried to compete against pirated editions by signing some volumes of the genuine edition as a mark of authenticity.

Charles Dickens enjoyed great success in America, a fact confirmed by a letter from his wife, Catherine, to her sister-in-law. Written shortly after the couple’s arrival in Boston, the letter describes the author as being “perfectly worshipped, and crowds follow him in the streets even.” She goes on, “The people are most hospitable, and we shall both be killed with kindness.”

More than fifteen years passed after the premiere of Giuseppe Verdi’s Aida before he debuted a new opera, Otello, to great acclaim at Milan’s Teatro alla Scala in 1887. Verdi would have been seventy or seventy-one years of age when he quickly sketched the early draft of the scene between Cassio and Iago on view.  

Despite his description of James Joyce’s Ulysses as “a depressing book” that “no one in their right mind could possibly enjoy,” E. M. Forster believed “it is, possibly, a masterpiece.” Around 1934 he drafted the article on display in support of Ulysses, which was first published in Paris in 1922 but banned in the United States and England until the 1930s. In it, Forster calls on fellow authors to support the novel’s publication and to fight censorship.

COMPLETE WORKS ON VIEW

Literary and Historical Manuscripts

• Thomas Cromwell’s letter to Sir Nicholas Wotton, urging him to help bring about King Henry VIII’s marriage to Anne of Cleves; October 27, 1539
• Catherine Dickens’s letter to her sister-in-law, Frances Burnett, describing her husband’s positive reception in Boston; January 30, 1842
• E. M. Forster’s The Censor Again? manuscript, defending James Joyce’s Ulysses; ca. 1934
• Sociologist Harriet Martineau’s Society in America manuscript; ca. 1837
• Queen Elizabeth I’s letter to her cousin, Henry III, King of France; August 2, 1589
• Fair copy of William Wordsworth’s poem “There is an Eminence, ? of these our hills,” written in the hand of his sister, Dorothy; 1799-1800

Medieval Manuscripts

• Book of Hours and eighteenth-century gilt silver filigree binding; Belgium, 1531
• Calendar illustrations for October and November, Italy, Bologna, 1324-28
• Portrait of St. John riding his eagle, from the Mostyn Gospels; England, ca. 1130
• Initial C, from a Psalter; Belgium, 1255-65
• Feast of SS. Peter and Paul, from the Sacramentary of Mont-Saint-Michel; France, ca. 1060

Music Manuscripts

• Pablo Minguet é Irol’s Arte de danzar a la francesa, one of the earliest dance manuals to be published in the Iberian Peninsula; Madrid, 1758(?)
• Witold Lutos?awski's manuscript for Chain I; 1983
• Autograph manuscript of Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart’s Horn Concerto in E-flat Major, K. 495; 1786
• Newly identified copyist manuscript of Domenico Scarlatti’s Fuga K. 30; 1756(?)
• Early draft of Giuseppe Verdi’s Sketches for Otello, (act 3, scene 5); 1884(?)
• Richard Wagner’s “Attente” (Anticipation), presented as a birthday gift to Franz Liszt’s daughter, Cosima, who was pregnant with Wagner’s child; 1868

Printed Books

• Oliver Byrne’s The First Six Books of the Elements of Euclid, in Which Coloured Diagrams and Symbols Are Used Instead of Letters for the Greater Ease of Learners; printed in London, 1847
• Hernán Cortés’s Praeclara Ferdinandi Cortesii de noua maris oceani Hyspania, containing maps of the New World; printed in Nuremberg, 1524
• Jacques Gohorry’s Hystoria Iasonis Thessaliae principis de Colchica velleris aurei expeditione in a sixteenth-century presentation binding
• First edition of the complete Hebrew Bible in all three parts; printed in Soncino, April 22, 1488
• Iliazd’s Lidantiu Faram, with a cover by Naum Granovski?; printed in Paris, 1923
• Two first edition volumes of Laurence Sterne’s The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy, Gentleman; printed in York and London, 1760-67