- 4
The Nativity of the Virgin, in a large historiated initial on a leaf from an illuminated antiphoner, on vellum [Bologna, c.1310]
Estimate
3,000 - 5,000 GBP
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Description
- Vellum
a large leaf, 600mm. by 400mm., with a large initial 'h' (opening "Hodie nat[us est ...]", the responsory for the feast of her birth, 8 September), 200mm. by 125mm., with St. Anne watching the baby Virgin in her crib, attended by the midwives, on a blue background with curling white penwork, the initial formed of fleshy and coloured acanthus-leaf foliage on thick burnished gold grounds, a profusion of similar acanthus leaves forming a decorated border on three sides, enclosing a single roundel with the St. Anne and the Virgin with an attendant in the bas-de-page, 5 lines of text in brown ink in a fine late gothic hand with music on a 4-line red stave, tiny instructions to illuminator in brown ink in margin ("nativitas sce mariae"), nineteenth-century pencil "19" on recto, some slight creasing to base (with minor crackling to edge of border), smudges to several faces in main initial, roughly cut from volume with damage to a bezant at top of leaf, else good condition
Catalogue Note
From the same volume as the previous leaf.