A leaf from a Gutenberg Bible illuminated in England

OLD libraries, even those with a great tradition in providing information of a high standard, may sometimes benefit from visitors who insist on not confining themselves to what is listed or catalogued, although the outcome will frequently be - to the annoyance of all concerned - that the search was for something that does not necessarily exist. This situation is all too familiar to those art historians who are experts of illumination and who trace special styles of decoration in manuscripts or printed books; moreover, they do not very often meet librarians who take them to the shelves or are willing to waste days looking for one item which cannot be identified by a precise shelf-mark. But the last time this happened the search was successful: to her own astonishment Lotte Hellinga found in the British Library collection of incunabula a forgotten leaf of a Gutenberg Bible which is not listed in its catalogue, BMC one of the greatest of all catalogues of incunabula. However, the leaf was found in the end, in a guard-book filled with interesting fragments bearing the number Sloane 1044. It was subsequently detached from this volume and press-marked according to the system used for incunabula, and is now known as IC.56a.