An exceptionally rare, illuminated music leaf from a Mozarabic Antiphonal with sister leaves mostly in museum collections

265 × 135 mm. Single leaf ruled in red ink with pairs of vertical bounding lines and four-line red staves, written in a formal Gothic book-hand, with square musical notation in brown ink, rubrics in red, seven lines of text and notation survive, along with partial eighth line at bottom, lower left corner of recto bears a modern pencil inscription, possibly reading “731” (or “131”) within a circle, along with traces of other pencil markings, ONE HISTORIATED INITIAL ‘D’ depicting a female saint of about five lines, painted in ochre on red ground framed by alternating bands of green and gold. Wear and staining throughout, with notable losses to pigments, text and images remain legible.

This leaf from a Mozarabic Antiphonal features a finely drawn historiated initial ‘D’ marking the incipit of the Diffusa est responsory for the Common of a Virgin at Matins. Within the initial, an unidentified female saint is depicted in the iconic orans pose, rendered in delicate ink with yellow shading against a vibrant parti-colored background. While the precise origin of this leaf remains elusive, its technique and decorative vocabulary are closely aligned with Mozarabic manuscript traditions of the early thirteenth century. The drapery is particularly noteworthy—patterned and stylized in a distinctly Romanesque manner, evoking the “damp-fold” style of English Romanesque art, though with a certain archaism when compared to the increasingly fluid drapery of contemporary northern European illumination. A sister leaf, now in the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston (MFA 17.530), depicting Christ Enthroned, displays similar rounded drapery troughs reminiscent of the Muldenstil associated with Germanic art of the early thirteenth century. A compelling parallel can also be found in the cartulary of Saint-Martin-du-Canigou (Archives Départementales des Pyrénées-Orientales, Perpignan, MS G 197), dated to around 1200. The female figure in the present initial closely resembles the Virgin depicted in that manuscript, sharing the same rounded head, open hands, and tight-fitting sleeves. Rich in stylistic resonance and visual refinement, this leaf offers not only a rare glimpse into Mozarabic liturgical art but also a compelling acquisition for collectors of early Romanesque illumination.

Provenance
(1) Sister leaves from the parent manuscript include a large initial depicting St. Bernard, a Bernardine text on the verso of the John the Baptist initial suggesting that the parent volume was of Cistercian origin.

(2) Robert Edouard Forrer (1866–1947), Strasbourg-based Swiss archaeologist, antiquarian, museum curator, publisher, and collector, owned at least nine of the eleven known sister leaves by 1907; the provenance of the remaining two leaves prior to 1997 is uncertain, although it is possible they too passed through his collection. Some leaves had left his possession by 1913, when the Boston leaves were placed on deposit at the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, by Denman Waldo Ross (1853–1935).

(3) Present leaf in the collection of Mark Lansburgh (1925–2013), art historian, hand-press printer, and teacher, of Santa Barbara, CA; Colorado Springs, CO. and Santa Fe, NM.
Acquired from Sam Fogg, London, in May 2004.

(4) Robert McCarthy, London, MS BM 1537.

Parent manuscript and sister leaves
At least one other cutting and approximately fourteen additional leaves from this manuscript are known: the cutting was recently offered at Christie’s; three leaves are in the Princeton Museum of Art; two leaves are in the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston; one is in the Lilly Library, Bloomington; and several others, whose current whereabouts are unknown, were formerly in the collection of Robert Forrer (see Provenance), their margins already cropped. Identified leaves from this manuscript include: Initial ‘V’, decorative, incorporating a young man’s head (Lilly Library, Bloomington, Ricketts MS 80); Initial ‘Q’, St Peter (ex-Forrer); Initial ‘Q’, Martyrdom of St Laurence (Princeton Museum of Art, 1997-546); Initial ‘P’, St Bernard (ex-Forrer); Initial ‘M’, John the Baptist being beheaded (ex-Forrer); Initial ‘I’, Christ Blessing (Montreal, Museum of Fine Arts, Inv. 962.1359); Initial ‘H’, St Martin dividing his cloak (ex-Forrer); Initial ‘S’, Martyrdom of St Stephen (ex-Forrer); Initial ‘O’, a cross on an altar (Princeton Museum of Art, 1997-547); Initial ‘P’, Tobias and Sarah kneeling with Raphael (Princeton Museum of Art, y1027); Initial ‘I’, Massacre of the Innocents (Boston Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, 17.530); Initial ‘C’, angel sounding the Last Trumpet (Boston, Museum of Fine Arts, 17.529); Initial ‘A’, zoomorphic initial with quadruped and human-headed dragon (ex-Forrer); Initial ‘C’, female saint (ex-Forrer); Initial ‘E’, bishop blessing (ex-Forrer); Initial ‘F’, John the Baptist (ex-Forrer); Initial ‘I’, the Evangelist symbol of John (ex-Forrer); Initial ‘O’, angel or God appearing to a man (ex-Forrer).

LITERATURE
Peter Kidd, The McCarthy Collection: Spanish, English, Flemish & Central European Miniatures, London, 2019, no. 3; related literature: Robert Forrer, Unedierte Miniaturen: Federzeichnungen und Initialen des Mittelalters, II, Strasbourg, 1907, pp. 11, figs. 2, 4, pls. XXXII–XXXIV; Sotheby’s, Western Manuscripts and Miniatures, London, 5 December 1989, lot 74 (ill.); Kornfeld und Klipstein, Graphik und Handzeichnungen Alter Meister, Bern, 8 June 1977, lot 170 (“vermutlich Schweiz, Anfang des 13. Jahrhunderts”); E. Leesti, Les Manuscrits liturgiques du moyen âge / Liturgical Manuscripts of the Middle Ages, Montréal, 1987, no. 18;
Patricia Stirnemann, “L’illustration du cartulaire de Saint-Martin-du-Canigou,” in Les cartulaires: Actes de la table ronde organisée par l’École nationale des chartes, ed. Olivier Guyotjeannin et al., Paris, 1993, pp. 171–78; Christie’s, Script and Illumination: Leaves from Medieval and Renaissance Manuscripts, 8 December 2016, lot 1.

We are grateful to Peter Kidd 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