Western Manuscripts and Miniatures

Important cutting attributed to a late Duecento illuminator, combining Byzantine and Romanesque motifs.
 
237 × 176 mm (irregularly trimmed). Single cutting with historiated initial painted in rose on blue ground framed in gold, decorated with white penwork pattern, lower register infilled with scene of Pentecost, with figures painted in red, blue, and rose garments with tooled halos in burnished gold, upper register with architectural elements, initial’s descender finished with a curled terminal. The cutting has been cleanly excised and trimmed to the contours of the initial, abrasions and pigment loss are visible along the borders, and the parchment is slightly cockled and stained from handling. Nevertheless, the miniature retains strong color saturation and visual clarity.

Richly illuminated, the historiated initial ‘S’ possibly introduced the Introit for Pentecost Sunday in a Gradual, beginning with the text Spiritus Domini replevit orbem terrarum, traditionally sung at the Mass of Pentecost. One of two rediscovered initials found in 2015 mounted to leaves of a later date, this cutting was formerly paired with a companion initial depicting The Liberation of Saint Peter. As both initials were extraneous to their supports they were separated for conservation and study. Sharing a consistent visual language and executed by the same accomplished hand, the two initials likely come from a now-dismembered Gradual that included both the Proper of Saints and the Proper of Time.

When first offered in Düsseldorf in 2015, the cuttings were tentatively attributed to northern Italy after the mid-thirteenth century, with a possible Venetian origin. The refined ornamental system—especially in the companion initial—draws on Romanesque decorative principles, where tendrils of grey and light blue outline the letter’s form and intertwine into geometric knots. These motifs recall the decorative vocabulary of the Gaibana Master (e.g., Padua, Biblioteca Capitolare, MS Ezz. Episcopale 12) and the early San Marco Choir Books (e.g., Venice, Biblioteca Marciana, MS I.3, fol. 26v), though the expressive figural idiom of the present artist signals a slightly later moment.

The present Pentecost initial is especially compelling: the apostles are seated in a semicircle beneath a Byzantine-inspired architectural canopy with festooned drapery. Their faces are animated, with abstracted curls of hair and lively gestures, while the drapery is rendered with elegant, parallel folds that recall the golden chrysograms of the Joseph mosaics in San Marco’s northern atrium—visual parallels that support a date after 1280. Stylistically, the miniatures bear comparison to the collaborators of Jacopino da Reggio, suggesting the artist was familiar with the emerging currents of late Duecento and early Trecento Emilian illumination. The figures’ dynamic poses, combined with an ornamental language both retrospective and progressive, suggest an artist working not in Venice proper but in the Venetian entroterra—the mainland cultural orbit of the lagoon city.

Provenance
(1) Düsseldorf Hargesheimer, Mittelalterliche Miniaturen & Buchmalerei, 21 March 2015,
Lots 25 and 26.

(2) Robert McCarthy, London, MS BM 2472.

Sister leaves
A sister cutting with the Liberation of Saint Peter held in the McCarthy Collection.

LITERATURE
Düsseldorf Hargesheimer, Mittelalterliche Miniaturen & Buchmalerei, 21 March 2015,
Lots 25 and 26; Gaudenz Freuler with Georgi Parpulov, The McCarthy Collection: Italian and Byzantine Miniatures, London, 2018, no. 42.

We are grateful to Gaudenz Freuler for permission to quote from his catalogue for this entry, and we thank Senior Consultant Sandra Hindman and Peter Bovenmyer for their assistance in preparing this sale.

The Robert McCarthy Collection