Christ Blessing and King David seated with harp, the Beatus initial on a leaf from the illuminated manuscript antiphoner ascribed to Duccio di Buoninsegna, on vellum

Estimate

30,000 - 50,000 GBP

bidding is closed

Description

single leaf, 358mm. by 270mm., an initial 'B' (opening "Beatus vir …"), initial: 160mm. by 94mm., the first Psalm, formed of elaborate leafy design in pale blue with green used to create depth and white penwork to pick out detail, small burnished gold fruit nestled in the foliage at each end of the ascender, on dark blue ground with white penwork, upper compartment enclosing a half-length portrait of Christ blessing and holding a book, lower compartment enclosing a full-length portrait of King David seated playing his harp, both figures with burnished gold haloes, and both on flesh-pink grounds, and within banded frames of burnished gold and terracotta, entire initial above a 20mm. high panel in red with the remainder of the initial two words ('… eatus vir') in white paint; entire leaf double column, ruled for 20 lines with a number of 4-line musical staves (c.28mm on verso; 21-3mm on recto), written in a dark brown ink in a rounded Italian gothic bookhand, 3-line initial on recto in blue, with red and green penwork, simple 1-line initials in alternate red or blue, rubrics and staves in red, capitals touched in red with single diagonal brushstroke, modern pencil notes on verso of "7/10" and "l00" in bottom left-hand corner, "2" in the bottom right-hand corner, and on recto "136" in upper left-hand corner, slightly faded (probably through exposure to sunlight), otherwise in outstanding condition, in a card mount

Provenance

The Beatus initial from a choirbook ascribed to Duccio di Buoninsegna, one of the most important panel painters of the early renaissance

provenance

This leaf is from the same manuscript as one formerly in the Robert Lehman collection (P. Palladino, Treasures of a Lost Art, 2003, item 27, pp. 48-50), and leaves now Yale, Beinecke Library, MSS. 483.18 & 483.19 (although misidentified as fifteenth-century in their recent catalogue). The measurements of the leaves and their staves are in agreement, the scribal hands identical, and the similarity of the historiated initials striking. The Lehman miniature was purchased from Maggs in 1924, and all these leaves bear Maggs pencil numbers identifying them as part of a close sequence, dispersed at one time.

Catalogue Note

illumination

In describing the Lehman miniature, Palladino confidently attributed the manuscript to the hand of the artist Duccio himself (documented 1278-1318), the father of the Sienese school of painting, and one of the leading figures in the history of early Italian art alongside such names as Cimabue and Giotto. He is best known for his spectacular altarpieces, apparently produced from the 1280s onwards (see for example the Rucellai Madonna, probably commissioned in 1285, and the wealth of material reproduced in Duccio: alle origini della pittura senese, 2003), but surviving documents show that he worked widely as a painter on a variety of media, and his hand has also been traced in monumental stained glass composition in Siena Cathedral (ibid., item 26, pp.166-80).

The style of depiction of some of the minor figures on his panel paintings has lead a number of scholars to conclude that Duccio had trained as a manuscript miniaturist, and continued to work occasionally as one (see for example B. Santi, "De pulcerima pictura …" in Gli Uffizi: Studi e Richerche, 1984, pp.17-19), and many of the features of the present miniature compare well with his works in more well-studied media. The delicate folds of Christ’s and King David's drapery, picked out with ghostlike white paintwork, reveal the quality of the workmanship, and find parallels in a depiction of Christ on the Cross by Duccio, owned by the Salini collection in Siena (Duccio, no. 25, pp. 162-5), and the Maésta, held by the Museo dell'Opera del Duomo in Siena (Duccio, no. 32, pp. 208-31, esp. 227-11). The use of multiple single-hair brushstrokes of white paint to highlight the beards in the present miniature stands apart from the work of Duccio's contemporaries, and again finds numerous parallels in his art, most notably in the portraits of aged men in the Maésta. Overall, it is the quality and delicacy of the faces and hands in the present miniature that sets it above Italian manuscript art of the late thirteenth century, and identifies it as the work of a master innovator. The features of the faces are soft as well as remarkably detailed: Christ's face that of a young and handsome man in calm benevolence, David's that of an old man, with furrowed brow and small intelligent eyes, leaning in to hear his harp; the hands are thin, delicate and nimble.

Moreover, the present leaf stands well above the others from this now-lost antiphoner. The posture of the figures of Christ and King David in the miniatures in the present leaf echo those of the Lehman leaf; Christ stands facing forward, right hand in blessing and left hand holding a book, exactly as God does in the upper portion of the initial on the Lehman miniature, and David leans to the right over his harp just as the Virgin in the Lehman miniature leans over the Christ Child. A similar figure of Christ is found in the second of the Beinecke miniatures, but here as the initial is single-compartmented only the figure of Christ appears. Presumably, these miniatures were planned as part of a sequence in the original manuscript, and within the extant parts of this sequence the present miniature is the largest and most impressive (the present miniature measures 160mm. by 94mm, the Lehmann one 87mm. by 67mm. and the Beinecke initials are approximately 79mm & 87mm in height).

A small panel painting by Duccio, recently acquired by the Metropolitan Museum of Art for over $45,000,000, currently holds the record price for any Old Master painting.