Vincent Raymond (illuminator to the Papal Court), The Martyrdom of Saint Laurence, a collage of cuttings from the Missal of Clement VII, illuminated manuscript on vellum

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Description

a collage of 5 cuttings, 305mm. by 245mm., (a) central portion,196mm. by 133mm., a miniature 100mm. by 72mm. showing a king and his court directing the burning of Saint Laurence on a gridiron, two men with bellows, one with a pitchfork, landscape background, within an elaborate architectural gateway and classical acanthus surround in liquid gold on a red ground including the Medici arms surmounted by a papal tiara, interlinked diamond rings, half-length winged grotesques and other emblems and symbols of piety and learning, a blue panel below the miniature inscribed in silver capitals ‘Laurentius bonum opus operatus este’ (the writing oxidised), (b) left-hand margin, 305mm. by 56mm., elaborate liquid gold classical acanthus decoration including animals and faces on blue and red ground enclosing two ovals with bearded saints holding framed marble or stone slabs (perhaps portable altars) and a roundel with the personal device of Clement VII (see below); (c) right-hand margin, 305mm. by 55mm., elaborate liquid gold classical acanthus decoration including animals and faces on blue, red and green ground enclosing two ovals with bearded saints holding scrolls and a roundel with the Medici devices of the yoke, the letter ‘N’, and the motto ‘Suave’ (see below); (d) upper margin, 45mm. by 133mm., liquid gold classical acanthus decoration including grotesques and birds on a green ground enclosing a roundel with the Medici devices of a diamond ring, three feathers and the motto ‘Semper’; and (e) lower margin, 65mm. by 131mm., elaborate liquid gold classical acanthus decoration including grotesque animals and a roundel with the Medici arms with the papal tiara and the keys of St.Peter, some slight rubbing, laid down, framed

Provenance

provenance

(1) Pope Clement VII (Guilio de’ Medici), pope 1523-34, for use in the Sistine Chapel in the Vatican. The cuttings come from one of two magnificent Missals for the Sanctoral made for Clement VII, listed in the Sistine Chapel inventory of 1714 as A.I.9 and A.I.10 (Rome, Archivio di Stato, Camerale I, Inventari, vol.1560, Reg.24; Panayotova, p.158).

(2) Stolen from the Sistine Chapel by Napoleonic troops, probably in February 1798 (cf. J. Alexander in The Towneley Lectionary, 1997, p.15).

(3) Luigi Celotti (c.1768-c.1846), secretary to Count Giovanni Barbarigo in Venice and reputedly an ‘Abate’, or priest; he doubtless took the volume apart and mounted its pieces into the present collage, probably to avoid tax on complete manuscripts; his sale, Christie’s, 26 May 1825, lot 67.

(4) William Horatio Crawford (1812-1880), of Lakelands, Cork; bought at the Celotti sale; sold by his descendants in these rooms, 11 April 1961, lot 117.

Catalogue Note

illumination

The magnificent illustrations in the present dismembered Missal of Clement VII are ascribed to Vincent Raymond or Vincenzo Raimondi (d.1557, known from c.1515), the French illuminator to the papal court, originally from Lodève in Languedoc (cf. W.M. Voelkle and R.S. Wieck, The Bernard H. Breslauer Collection of Manuscript Illuminations, 1992, pp.224-27, no.90; R.S. Wieck, ‘Folia Fugitiva: The Pursuit of the Illuminated Manuscript Leaf’, The Journal of the Walters Art Gallery, LIV, 1996, p.238 and fig.9; S. Hindman et al., Manuscript Illumination in the Modern Age, 2002, p.57; and S. Panayotova in P. Binski and S. Panayotova, eds., The Cambridge Illuminations, 2005, pp.158-9, no.65, all with further references). Other Missals illuminated for the papal chapels by Raymond are recorded in the Vatican accounts for 1538 and 1547 (L. Dorez, Le Psautier de Paul III, 1909, pp.41 and 43). His later work included the Hours of Paul III (Paris, BnF, ms.lat. 8880) and the Hours of Eleanor Gonzaga (Oxford, Bodleian, MS. Douce 29). It may be that there are two hands in the present collage. The miniatures are certainly the work of Raymond, with their soft colours and mannerist compositions. It is easy to believe that these are the work of a French artist, working in Rome among the frescoes of Michelangelo. The borders, however, look Florentine. They have the crisp classical shapes and deep colours familiar from the manuscript painting of Attavante in Florence. Similar borders appear in cuttings of the Missal of Leo X, usually ascribed to Attavante himself (P. Palladino, Treasures of a Lost Art, 2003, pp.166-7, no.84; Panayotova and Binski, pp.157-8, no.64). It is therefore notable that in May 1525, two years after Clement VII succeeded to the papacy, a Florentine illuminator Blasius was paid 100 golden ducats for his work on the Missals of Leo X and Clement VII (cf. E. Müntz, La bibliothèque du Vatican au XVI^e siècle, Notes et documents, 1886, pp.65-78; and C. Nordenfalk, ‘Tre nyförvärvade bokmålningar’, Stockholm Nationalmuseum Bulletin, XV, 1991, pp.74-81). To judge from the present cuttings, where Vincent Raymond is apparently collaborating with a lesser Florentine illuminator, the borders are very likely to be by Blasius and the whole work was probably therefore executed in the early summer of 1525.

Clement VII was a Medici. Saint Laurence (shown here) had been the patron saint of his great-uncle, Lorenzo the Magnificent. The Medici arms here are over the keys of Saint Peter and surmounted by the papal tiara. The borders are filled with Medici emblems, including the interlinked diamond rings, the word ‘Semper’ with feathers and a diamond ring – diamonds are ‘forever’, exactly that – and the motto ‘Suave’ also used by his Medici uncle, Leo X (it is an allusion to Matthew 11:30). The device on the left, however, is uniquely that of Clement VII, invented by his treasurer, Domenico Buoninsegni, who had noted the intensity of heat when sunlight passes through a pure rock crystal sphere. In the vignette here it sets fire to a tree, and appears with the pope’s personal motto, referring to the crystal, ‘Candor ilesus’, literally ‘whiteness undamaged’ (cf. M. Parry, ‘Candor illaesus: The Impressa of Clement VII’, Burlington Magazine, CXIX, 1977, pp.676-86).

The present volume must have comprised the Sanctoral of the pope’s Missal. Most of the saints commemorated had feasts between June and November. Saint Laurence was on 10 August. The Celotti sale records four lots of border fragments from the manuscript, lots 57-60, and 15 collages of miniatures, as in the present lot. One of the borders was sold in our rooms, 25 April 1983, lot 213. The collages were:

Lot 61, £7.7s., Martyrdom of Saint Katherine; Northwick sale, Sotheby’s, 16 November 1925, lot 116; re-sold, Sotheby’s, 28 July 1948, lot 215, and 10 December 1962, lot 103; Christie’s, 20 June 1990, lot 21; now Stockholm, Nationalmuseum, NMB 2339.

Lot 62, £9.5s., Martyrdom of Saint Clement; Northwick sale, Sotheby’s, 16 November 1925, lot 115; Sotheby’s, 18 February 1947, lot 432; collection of A.G. Thomas (his Fine Books, 1967, pl.29); now private collection, England.

Lot 63, £9.9s., Saint Leo’s vision of the Virgin; now Cambridge, Fitzwilliam Museum, Marlay Cutting It.35.

Lot 64, £5.5s., Stigmatisation of Saint Francis, untraced.

Lot 65, £7.7s., Martyrdom of Saint Sebastian, untraced.

Lot 66, £8.8s., Beheading of two saints, untraced (unless this is Victoria and Albert Museum, E.4578-1910, see below, which shows Saint Paul and another saint).

Lot 67, £7.7s., Martyrdom of Saint Laurence, the present sheet.

Lot 68, £7.7s., Saints Cosmas and Damian, now Victoria and Albert Museum, E.4577-1910.

Lot 69, £8.5s., Assumption of the Virgin, now British Library, Add.MS. 35254 L.

Lot 70, £9.5s., Nativity of Saint John the Baptist; Lakelands sale, Sotheby’s, 11 April 1961, lot 118; Breslauer cat. 101 (c.1961), no.26; B.H. Breslauer collection no.90, now sold.

Lot 71, £7.7s., Decollation of Saint Paul; now Victoria and Albert Museum, E.4578-1910.

Lot 72, £7.7s., Group of martyrs, including SS. Paul, Stephen and others, untraced.

Lot 73, £8.8s., Clement VII in procession, untraced.

Lot 74, £21.10s.6d., Descent from the Cross; now Cambridge, Fitzwilliam Museum, Marlay Cutting It.34.

Lot 75, £18.18s., Last Judgement; Quaritch, cat. (1948), no.11; now Harvard, Houghton Library, MS. Typ.734.