The Coronation of the Virgin, extremely large historiated initial cut from an illuminated manuscript Gradual on vellum

Estimate

3,000 - 5,000 GBP

bidding is closed

Description

a cutting, 280mm. by 220mm. (mounted onto a larger piece of vellum, see below), a scene set in Heaven, God seated beside the Virgin on a bank of clouds turning to place a crown on her head, within a mandorla of burnished gold surrounded by the heads and four wings of a multitude of seraphim and cherubim and crowds of attendant angels, set within a pale blue sky and attended on either side of the foreground by All Saints, including SS. John the Baptist, Peter, Paul and others, all painted in colours and liquid and burnished gold within an extremely large initial ‘G’ in very elaborate design of flowers and leaves including an interlaced design of white tapes around gold quatrefoils, jewels, strawberries, etc., with marginal extensions of coloured leaves infilled with burnished gold bezants within radiating brown penwork, rather worn, the gold flaked especially on the right, cut to the shape of the illumination and skilfully laid down onto an album leaf of vellum, 345mm. by 258mm., and then carefully illuminated in the upper and right-hand margins in imitation of the original to extend the decoration into the borders, traces of text and of music on a red 4-line stave just visible from the other side when the cutting is held up to the light

Catalogue Note

The cutting comes from a monumental Florentine choirbook. It doubtless illustrated the introit ‘Gaudeamus omnes in domino’ which opens several feasts of the Virgin Mary. Like a number of other cuttings, bought in Florence in the nineteenth century (such as the Lorenzo Monaco initial in the Metropolitan Museum of Art, 1975.1.2485), it has been cut to shape, laid down, and then carefully extended to create a picture without the hindrance of text. The lower margin is original. The initial must have been in the lower half of its leaf.

The painting is attributable to Antonio di Girolamo (1479-1556), admitted to the illuminators’ guild of San Zenobio in 1492, and who was recorded as working for the Duomo in Florence in the mid-1520s. The illumination here shows all the details of his style, as in A. Garzelli, Miniatura Fiorentina del Rinascimento, 1985, II, figs. 1092-96; cf. also D. Galizzi in M. Bollati, ed., Dizionario biografico dei miniatori italiani, 2004, pp.33-4, with bibliography.