The Assumption of the Virgin, historiated initial on a cutting from an illuminated antiphoner, on vellum [Italy (Tuscany), late fourteenth century]

provenance

1. One of a series of 39 cuttings from the choirbooks of the Charterhouse of Lucca (presumably the Carthusian abbey of Certosa di Farneta near Lucca), acquired by James Dennistoun (1803-55), the Scottish antiquary and one of the earliest connoisseurs of Italian medieval art, and once pasted into his red morocco album of cuttings (see Munby, Connoisseurs and Medieval Miniatures, 1972, p.158, and J. Pope-Hennessy, Learning to Look, 1991, 29, for comment on this album, the latter as "Uncle Denny's scraps") as no.88. There he records that "on the invasion of Italy by the revolutionary armies of France, these beautiful books were plundered, and fell into the hands of some boors, who proceeded to cut up the broad parchment leaves, wherewith to cover their flasks of olive oil. Fortunately someone rather less barbarous rescued these initials by crudely cutting them out'.

2. Sir Kenneth Clark (1903-83), later Lord Clark of Saltwood; album acquired c.1930 from Dennistoun's granddaughter; his sale in our rooms, 3 July 1984, lot 92, item 5.

illumination

While an array of artists were represented in Dennistoun's collection of cuttings from Lucca, the 5 initials in lot 92 of the Clark sale were almost certainly from the same series of volumes, executed by a Sienese artist, or small group of artists, perhaps working with Martino di Bartolomeo (fl. 1389-1434/5). The face of the Virgin here, with her pronounced nose and short expressionless mouth, shares much with the figure of Christ in one of these sister cuttings, later in the Breslauer collection (Voelkle and Wieck, nos.67-9, esp.67).