Csornay Boldizsár - Dobos Zsuzsa - Varga Ágota - Zakariás János szerk.: A Szépművészeti Múzeum közleményei 100. (Budapest, 2004)

URBACH, ZSUZSA: Ein flämischer ikonographischer Bildtypus im italienischen Quattrocento. Bemerkungen zur Studie von Éva Eszláry

mentary, picked apart down to their pages, not infrequently rearranged and trimmed by collectors. One can deduce the order of the bifolios even within the rebound quires, together with their gaps and rearrangements, by means of Gregory's Rule. A drawing of two pages, for instance, can provide decisive proof that the two pages were already side-by-side at the time of drawing. But the former tracings of the stick-holes, creases at the centre of the folded sheets and the moisture damages are also important, as is - if not in every case - the uniform or disparate character of the style of the drawings.

72 Reconstruction of the quire composition When the Budapest Model-book was acquired into the collection, it consisted of a single bound quire of eight parchment sheets folded in half (eight bifolios, sixteen leaves, thirty-two sides), which was covered by a similarly folded blank parchment sheet of identical dimension. When in the collection, the model-book was divided into its individual sheets, their order was not marked either on the parchment sheets or on its catalogue card. In 1973, Loránd Zentai could only rely on the order of the parchment sheets as they were in their portfolio, and the numbering of the leaves that he published follows this. Even if, in his study, he gave voice to doubts as to the fidelity to the original order of the parchment sheets, he found the arrangement of the sheets as a whole acceptable, in all, arguing about the placement of just a single parchment sheet within the portfolio. According to Loránd Zentai, in its initial condition, the model-book was composed of just seven bifolios, to which the subsequent, second master attached a newer parchment sheet folded in half (bf. VII). With respect to this newly added parchment sheet, Loránd Zentai suggested where its original place should have been.'

3 In any case, the numbering of the leaves as per his published study leads to an unusual conclusion, being that the first workshop drawings commence only on the fifth page of the model-book.

74 Why would the first four pages of the quire have been left blank in the first workshop, commencing drawing only on the fifth page, instead of starting from the beginning with works? But at least as peculiar would have been the use of a quire assembled from seven bifolios, which would appear rather to be compiled at a later date in such a format. The arrangement of the drawings aligned in the eight bifolios also suggests a later rearrangement of the sheets of the quire, of an a posteriori nature. In five bifolios of the model-book (bff. II-VI) drawings derive from both periods, while in the other three bifolios (bff. I, VII, VIII) drawings can be found from only the master of the second workshop. If we remove the latter three bifolios from the model-book as described by Loránd Zentai (i.e., two folded parchment sheets from the beginning of the quire, and one from the centre), the remaining five bi72 On the codicological aspects of the reconstruction of drawing-books, see Elen, op. cit. (n. 2), esp. 26-29. 73 Zentai, op. cit. 1981 (n. 3), 34-35. 74 According to Zentai's foliation: f. 3r (bf. II, f. 2r).