Where did this go?
After the death of the King Louis IX of France, the Morgan Bible was passed along to his younger brother Charles I; under Charles I, the Latin text was added to the Bible. All ownership of the Bible before the early fifteenth century is purely determined by circumstantial evidence. The first recorded owner of the Morgan Bible was Cardinal Bernard Maciejowski, the Bishop of Poland. Maciejowski most likely obtained the Bible while studying for the priesthood in Italy.
Cardinal Bernard Maciejowski in 1604 gifted the Bible to Shah Abbas; this is shown in the first folio: “Bernard Maciejowski, Cardinal Priest of the Holy Roman Church, Bishop of Cracow, Duke of Siewierz, and Senator of the Kingdom of Poland with sincere wishes offers this gift to the supreme King of the Persians at Cracow the mother city of the kingdom of Poland on the seventh of September 1604.” In 1608, Shah, while in Persia, added the Persian inscriptions to the Bible. At a later date in history, perhaps around 1722 when Afghans conquered Isfahan, the royal treasury and library were looted. The manuscript reached a Persian Jew, who then added the Judeo-Persian Inscriptions.
Eventually, the manuscript reached Cairo, the capital of Egypt where it was purchased by a British employed collector, John d’Athanasi.
The manuscript was brought to London where it would be sold in an auction. It was purchased by London dealers Payne and Foss, who then sold it to Sir Thomas Phillips. Following his death, his daugther, Katherine inherited his belongings.
On December 10th, 1910, Sotheby’s, on behalf of the Phillipps Trustees, offered the manuscript to Pierpont Morgan for for £10,000. After his death, the library and the collections were inherited by his son John Pierpont Morgan, Jr.; who eventually founded the Morgan Library in 1924.
The 48 original folios of the Morgan Picture Bible have been traded, sold, or lost; they no longer reside together as a full series. Forty-three folios find their home in Pierpont Morgan Library in New York City, while two folios reside in the National Library of France. The J. Paul Getty Museum is now home to a single folio. Two of the original folios are thought to be missing.