Western Manuscripts and Miniatures

This elegant Missal leaf and its sister leaves pave the way for reconstructing an important manuscript from Assisi, already dismantled in 1871, for which a skilled Perugian workshop was responsible.
 
365 x 245 mm. Single leaf, ruled in plummet for two columns of 25 lines (written space: 222 x 145 mm), written in brown ink a rounded Italian gothic bookhand, rubrics in red, one-line initials in blue and red on contrasting penwork, five two- to five-line illuminated initials in burnished gold, pink, blue, green, and vermillion red with white tracery, extending into scalloped leaves in the margin, with white tracery and spiral filigree (fades in the brown ink, minor stains, slight browning at upper margin, else in very good condition).

This leaf belonged to the Temporal of a Missal and contains part of the liturgy for the Ember Saturday of Lent, as the recto begins imperfectly with the lesson of Ecclesiasticus 36:3, “potentiamtuam…,” followed with the collect “Actionesnostra…,” hymns, and the collect “Deus qui tribus,” while the verso continues with the lesson from 1 Thessalonians 5:14-23, the tract “Qui regis Israël,” and the Gospel sequence of Matthew 17:1-3, ending imperfectly with “…illis Moyses.”

The delicate five illuminated initials are characteristic of late thirteenth-century manuscript illumination in Perugia. The bars that extend from the initials into the margins are enlivened with foliage seen in profile, with scalloped edges highlighted with white filigree, which tends to spiral into pinwheel-like patterns. These features find their best comparison with a group of manuscripts attributed to Perugia of which some are found in Gubbio, Archivio di Stato (MS A), and Paris, BnF (MS lat. 41, 3026, 3990B, 14278, and 17833). In 2003, Maria Subboni, who has dubbed the artist the Maestro delle Foglie Hindman after the appearance of folios in catalogues of Les Enluminures (Cat. 1, no. 3), suggested that all the sister leaves may come from an Augustinian Missal in the Biblioteca del Sacro Convento in Assisi (MS 267).

In the catalogue of the McCarthy collection, which holds three sister leaves of the present leaf, Gaudenz Freuler has stressed the importance of this “highly elegant Missal that must have once belonged to an important religious institution.” He relates the illuminator of the missal to the Master of the Assisi Choirbooks active in Umbria at the end of thirteenth century, on the basis of their historiated initials and predilection for blue tones, which further supports the attribution of the Missal to a workshop active in Perugia.
 
Provenance
Private Collection, California, USA, MS 295.

Sister leaves
This hitherto unrecorded leaf comes from an opulent and early Italian missal, of which only a few sister leaves have been published throughout the years: two in the Bernard Breslauer collection (Voekle and Wieck 1992, cat. 58-59) and one offered by Les Enluminures (Illuminations, cat. 1, 1992, no. 4), all part of the McCarthy Collection (Freuler 2018), one sold by Maggs Bros (223109), as well as another leaf formerly in the collection of Friedrich G. Zeileis, Austria, sold by Koller, Zurich, 18 September 2015, lot 109.

Parent manuscript
Said to come from an album in the Prince of Liechtenstein Collection, dispersed in 1871 (Les Enluminures, Cat. 1, 1992, no. 3).

LITERATURE
On the sister leaves, see: William M. Voelkle and Rogier S. Wieck, The Bernard Breslauer Collection of Manuscript Illuminations, New York, 1992, nos. 58-59, pp. 160-163; Sandra Hindman, Les Enluminures, Cat. 1, no. 3; Maria Subbioni, La miniature perugina del Trecento, Perugia, 2003; Gaudenz Freuler and Georgi Parpulov, The McCarthy Collection, Vol. I, Italian and Byzantine Miniatures, London, 2018, no. 47, pp. 149-153.

Freeman’s | Hindman thank Senior Consultant Sandra Hindman and Elliott Adam for their assistance in preparing this sale.