L12240

/

Lot 8
  • 8

King David in a historiated initial cut from an illuminated choirbook on vellum [north Italy (most probably Milan), late fifteenth century]

Estimate
4,000 - 6,000 GBP
Log in to view results
bidding is closed

Description

  • Vellum
a cutting, 115mm. by 105mm., with a large initial 'L' in pink heightened with scrolling white foliage, on burnished gold grounds overlaid with organic yellow tracery, enclosing David as an old man with a long beard and bald head, hands clasped in prayer as God the Father appears to him from a golden sun with undulating tendrils of light, verso covered with paper with only a few edges of letters visible, some tiny scuffs but overall in excellent condition

Provenance

provenance

The miniature has an inscription on its verso recording that it was originally "from the Cathedral of Como", and was acquired from "Saml Rogers Collectn May 1856". This is Samuel Rogers (1763-1855), the poet, friend of Byron and Shelley, who was a principal buyer in the sale in our rooms, 12 May 1838 of the collection of William Young Ottley (1771-1836), which included a clutch of miniatures all identically inscribed as from the Cathedral of Como (others are now Fitzwilliam Museum, Morley Cuttings It.68, and elsewhere), probably in error for Cremona Cathedral.  The present cutting must have been part of lot 984 or 990-92 in the Rogers sale

Catalogue Note

illumination

The detailed sideways portrait and the presence of the Visconti-sun motif point to the earliest Milanese flowerings of Renaissance manuscript art, such as the copy of Antonio Minuti, Vita di Muzio Attendolo Sforza, dated 1491 (now Château de Blois, see Dix Siècles d'Enluminure Italienne, 1984, no.139), which has similar portraits of Sforza dukes before richly coloured backgrounds heightened with clusters of white dots. The portrait here is by a skilled artist, and the blue veins at David's temples, wisp of hair on the peak of his head and scrawny neck suggest his old age and frailty.