Agenda

The Comites Latentes include 212 manuscripts from the 6th to the 20th centuries. In the 1960s, Sion Segre Amar (1910-2003) started collecting manuscripts. He called his collection Comites Latentes, meaning hidden (travel) companions because he always carried some copies with him.

Since 1977, the collection has been at the Bibliothèque de Genève, where it is scientifically researched. The collection includes prayer books and religious, literary, administrative and legal texts. Most date from the Middle Ages, including 98 religious manuscripts, 47 profane literature and 67 fragments with illuminations.

Many manuscripts come from Italy or France and are written in Latin, but there are Hebrew and Greek texts and small plates with cuneiform script. After he died in 2003, his children inherited the collection and founded the Comites Latentes Società Semplice in 2018.

This organisation aims to research the collection and make it accessible to the public. The intention is to digitise the collection and make it available on the internet. The first manuscripts of the Comites Latentes have already been digitised on the initiative of the Bibliothèque de Genève and published on the e-codices portal.

The historical Museum Basel and the University Library have received this collection on loan for 15 years. In cooperation with Geneva, the research is continuing.

The Historical Museum Basel displays several works from this unique collection until 5 March 2023, among others a Hebrew prayer book in silver binding, a parchment scroll with the Bible story of the Jewish woman Esther and French-language saints’ vitae and an excerpt from the so-called Burckhardt-Wildt Apocalypse: a manuscript named after its later owner Daniel Burckhardt-Wildt (1752-1819).

Aristide Maillol (1861–1944) is the most important French sculptor of the early modern era after Auguste Rodin. A major and influential figure who is both modern and timeless, Maillol created sensual art that embodies the values of clarity and balance of forms, making him a consummate artist of the classical tradition.

The exhibition brings together over 140 works, with both sculptures – including all the artist’s key works – and paintings: Maillol began his career as a painter, producing canvases of great quality that are still little known outside France. Also on display are decorative objects, tapestries designed by Maillol, and enchanting drawings.

The presentation additionally incorporates paintings by contemporaries such as Paul Gauguin, Maurice Denis and Édouard Vuillard, revealing the closeness of Maillol’s relationship to them.

The exhibition “Ave Caesar! Romans, Gauls and Germanic tribes on the banks of the Rhine” (Ave Caesar! Römer, Gallier und Germanen am Rhein) highlights the relationships between the advanced civilisations of the Mediterranean region and the indigenous Gaulish and Germanic tribes on both sides of the River Rhine.

The river is the central theme around which the various fascinating aspects of these contacts have been staged. The exhibition is divided into five parts: The seat of a Celtic ruler, dealing with the Celtic ruling class and their magnificent estates around 500 BC.

The section on the “Celtic settlement” illustrates how the Celts around Basel abandoned their unfortified settlement on the Rhine and constructed a new fortification on the ‘Münsterhügel’.

The “Roman legionary camp”, the third part, shows how the legionaries lived in the region and how their campaigns against the Germanic tribes on the right bank of the Rhine progressed.

The “Roman country estate” is the fourth part and is devoted to the way in which food supplies for the growing population were maintained and shows which Mediterranean foods were newly grown in the Rhine region at that time.

The final part of the exhibition is entitled “Roman colony” and illustrates how Roman culture became established in the conquered territories.

The exhibition is part of the project “Der Rhein/le Rhin. 3 Länder-38 Ausstellungen/ 3 Pays – 38 expositions“.