Page 318 - The Secret Museum

Morgan Library (Gardner referred to Morgan and Frick as ‘squillionaires’, for they

could spend more on their collections than she could on hers), they were designed for
big groups to read, or in this case, sing from, at the same time. The monastery’s choir
would have gathered around the appropriate book for the day, in the church, to sing
their hearts out.

The musical notes are written in neumes, big square notes, unlike the chubbier,
round notes we are more familiar with. The music and the Latin text were written by
Fra Girolamo da Nola, a scribe-monk from the town of Nola. At certain points in the
book, he wrote one word vertically at the bottom of the page. He wasn’t odd: the

vertical words are called ‘catchwords’ and are like our page numbers: they told the
binder in which order to gather the pages for the book. Girolamo signed each book at
the end and handed it over to a workshop of artists run by the painter Giovan Battista
Rosa, who created thick, vivid, gold, red and blue illuminated images of the saints.

How nine of the books left Naples and ended up on the East Coast of America is a
mystery. Anne Marie thinks that George Gardner may well have bought this book in
1887 when staying in a monastery near Naples during a tour of Europe. He said it had
been rescued from a shipwreck, and the water damage suggests this is possible – but

where was the ship going? We don’t know yet. But we do know that the eight
volumes in New York are now back in Italy and this book in the Isabella Stewart
Gardner Museum in Boston is the only one we know of that is away from its home in
Santa Maria dell’ Arco.

So, if you ever visit Naples and see pilgrims travelling to the shrine of the
Madonna dell’Arco, carrying poles with the sacred image on top, think of the huge
book in Boston, decorated with the image of the Madonna, her child and the ball that
changed everything. Or, if you visit Isabella Stewart Gardner’s museum, her homage

to beauty, study her portrait, then look at the wooden chest below. On top of the
chest, the book will sit, firmly shut – unless you’re lucky and visit a rare books
evening at the Gardner, where, maybe, it might be open for an hour. Now you have
glimpsed inside it and know its hidden story, and how one day it was opened with
much ceremony and its songs burst forth in beauty.