Two Martyr Saints, in an initial from a choirbook, on vellum [Italy (Verona), c.1490-1500]

a cutting, 103mm. by 106mm., with a large initial ‘L’ formed of a pink column and a dolphin encased in green foliage, surmounted by a pomegranate and a blueberry, all on a brightly burnished gold ground, showing two portraits of saints dressed as fashionable Italian gentlemen, both holding palms of martyrdom and one also a book, through a window-like opening and all before a pale blue sky, back with a single line of text with music on a 4-line red stave, rastrum: 46mm., laid down on modern vellum, losses from gold ground and halos, burnished gold partly retouched, small pigment losses and slight smudges, framed

1. Rodolphe Kann (1845-1905) of Paris, banker, gold and diamond mining investor and art collector, who began with an acquisition of 11 paintings by Rembrandt, and later owned a number of important Dutch paintings, including Vermeer’s Girl Asleep at a Table (now New York, Metropolitan Museum), as well as bronzes, tapestries and medieval miniatures. The sale of his collection after his death was thought then to be the largest single transaction ever to have taken place in the art world. The present cutting was illustrated in E. Rahir, Catalogue of the Rodolphe Kann Collection, I, 1907, no.75, and discussed by W. Suida in Art in America (January 1947), p.26.

2. Arabella Yarrington Huntington (c.1850-1924), thought to be the richest woman in America. She was the second wife of Collis P. Huntington, who after his death in 1900 remarried his nephew Henry E. Huntington, and together they founded the Huntingdon Library, San Marino.

3. Duveen Brothers, New York. Exhibited in the Los Angeles County Museum: Mediaeval and Renaissance Illuminated Manuscripts. A Loan Exhibition, 1953, one of nos.110-112.

4. Denys Miller Sutton (London, 1917-91), bought from the Duveen Brothers in 1963.

illumination

The twin saints are most probably Gervasius and Prothasius, sons of martyr parents and patron saints of Milan (they might also be the twins, Cosmas and Damian, but the latter are usually shown as physicians). The subtle modelling and shading of flesh and cloth of this fine Renaissance miniature lends the figures a tactile presence and emphasizes their three-dimensional presence, shown as if lit from the upper left, with a dark maroon line along the top-left border and a yellow line along the bottom-right. The style is closely related to the work of Francesco Dai Libri (c.1450-1503/06) and his son Girolamo (c.1474-1555), and is especially close to a number of cuttings with initials from the Monastero di Santa Maria in Organo, today in the Museo di Castelvecchio in Verona, which may be those specified in extant payment instructions from the Olivetans to Francesco and Girolamo themselves for the illumination of a Psalter in 1502 (G. Castiglioni in Mantegna e le Arti a Verona 1450-1500, 2006, pp.379-82). This initial was once part of a group of 19, which Rahir identified as from the same antiphoner. Three of the others are now in the Wildenstein collection in the Musée Marmottan, Paris (M6103, 6104 and 6105).