The recent sale included such jewels of the Western book world as an opulently illuminated prayer book made around 1490 for Isabella d’Este (1474-1539), the foremost female patron of the Italian Renaissance (lot 90: sold for £421,600); a thirteenth-century Bible from medieval Canterbury Cathedral, with 83 painted scenes set within its tiny decorated initial letters (lot 81: sold for £124,000), which is the very last recorded book from that crucial medieval library outside of institutional ownership; a copy of the principal account of the fantastic life of Alexander the Great, (showing above), made in northern Italy in the fourteenth century, and still in its contemporary binding (lot 80: sold for £37,200), and the only copy to come to the open market since 1914.