Featuring a luminous historiated initial within a tabernacle-like frame in a sophisticated Gothic style.
 
551 × 380 mm. Single leaf with vertical bounding lines faintly ruled in plummet or leadpoint for a single column with seven groups of four-line staves, each 32 mm, text written in black ink in textualis rotunda and music in black ink with square notation (notae quadratae), versals and responsories in red, one smaller pen-flourished initial ‘A’ in blue with red and purple ink penwork appears in the upper right quadrant of the page, ONE HISTORIATED INITIAL ‘I’ of approximately six lines depicting a bishop saint—likely St. Augustine—shown in episcopal vestments with mitre and crosier, set against a gold ground and framed within a tabernacle-like architectural initial, vine-like tendrils extend from the historiated initial into the lower and left margins, terminating in a bird-like hybrid creature and floral foliate terminals in red and grey. Minor creases, staining, and loss at corners, margins slightly trimmed, but the overall legibility and integrity of the musical content and decoration remain intact.
 
This striking leaf, from a now-dispersed Antiphonary, preserves part of the First Response of the First Nocturne for the Feast of St. Augustine (28 August), beginning with Invenit se Augustinus longe esse a Deo. In the lower margin, a finely executed six-line historiated initial depicts a bishop saint—almost certainly St. Augustine—enthroned within a tabernacle-like initial. He wears episcopal vestments, including a mitre and crozier, and is framed against a luminous ground of burnished gold. The architectural surround is rendered in soft grey, flanked by vibrant orange-red pilasters, and delicately set off by leafy marginal extensions, including a bird pecking at a curling vine.
 
Though relatively restrained in its decoration, the leaf displays a sophisticated handling of form and color. The saint’s blue tunic, greenish flesh tones, and expressive features—especially his slightly angular face and gentle smile—reveal a hand attuned to the visual language of late thirteenth-century illumination in northern Italy. While the artist remains anonymous, the style bears notable affinities with painters working in the orbit of Bologna and Emilia-Romagna, particularly the illuminator of f. 222v of MS Ludwig I.II in the Getty Museum. Likely trained outside Bologna, this artist demonstrates a refined regional interpretation of the Bolognese Gothic style emerging at the dawn of the fourteenth century.
 
Provenance
(1) London, Sotheby’s, 1 December 1998, lot 41.
 
(2) Robert McCarthy, London, MS BM 1214a
 
Parent manuscript and sister leaves
Presently unknown.
 
LITERATURE
London, Sotheby’s, Western Manuscripts and Miniatures, 1 December 1998, lot 41; Gaudenz Freuler with Georgi Parpulov, The McCarthy Collection, Vol. 1, Italian and Byzantine Miniatures, London, 2018, no. 27.
 
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