Western Manuscripts and Miniatures

A charming initial, typical of abstract Romanesque illumination with an interlaced vine stem on green, blue, and yellow ground.
 
168 x 130 mm. Partial leaf, ruled in plummet, for one column (of originally two?) with 24 lines remain on the recto and 25 lines on the verso, pricking for rules in outer margin, written in brown ink in a proto-gothic bookhand, rubrics in red, punctuations marked by a dot, ONE VERY LARGE SIXTEEN-LINE DECORATED INITIAL outlined in red and infilled with interlacing vine stems, on a green, blue, and yellow ground (parchment partially soiled, browning on the outer edge, minor spots, yellow pigment in the initial faded, else in excellent condition).
 
This imposing partial leaf with an initial “S” comes from a De patriarchis by St. Ambrose of Milan produced in mid-twelfth century Italy. It contains the end of De Jacob et vita beata and the beginning of De Joseph patriarca, reading on the recto from Chapter XII of De Jacob et vita beata, “[tra]hebant. isti ad sacrificii victoriam…,” to the start of Chapter I of De Joseph patriarca, “Sanctorum vita caeteris norma vivendi est… De quibus….” De Joseph patriarca is introduced by a very large decorated initial ‘S,’ for “Sanctorum,” outlined in red and infilled with interlacing vine stems terminating in curly leaves on a tricolor ground in blue, green and yellow. The style of the initial is related to manuscripts produced around the middle of the twelfth century in Tuscan scriptoria.

Provenance
(1) Maggs Bros, London, Catalogue 1376 (2005), no. 4.

(2) Robert McCarthy, London, MS BM 1612.
                                                                                                                
Sister leaves
There is another partial leaf of the same style in the McCarthy collection, doubtlessly from the same broken-up manuscript of St. Ambrose’s De patriarchis, published together with the present leaf as no. 8 in his catalogue (see below).

LITERATURE
On the present leaf and the other sister leaf, published: Maggs Bros. London, Catalogue 1376 (2005), no. 4 and 5; Gaudenz Freuler and Georgi Parpulov, The McCarthy Collection, Vol. I, Italian and Byzantine Miniatures, London, 2018, no. 8, pp. 30-31.

We are grateful to Gaudenz Freuler for permission to quote from his catalogue for this entry.