A Fool, historiated initial on a leaf from an Antiphonary, in Latin, illuminated manuscript on vellum [Italy (Florence), c.1480-90]

single leaf, 555mm. by 417mm., historiated initial ‘D’ (opening “Dixit insipiens in corde suo: non est deus …”, The fool hath said in his heart, there is no God, the Psalm reading for the ferial office at Matins), in pink with white penwork decoration and an inner segment in light brown, with fleshy acanthus in blue, green and pink on a burnished gold ground enclosing the three-quarter length figure of a fool clad in rags, wearing a hat covered with little bells and holding a marotte (a fool’s sceptre with two tiny sails so it is propelled around in the wind), standing before a wall and a landscape, accompanied in the outer border by acanthus-leaf sprays terminating in flower heads and surrounded by gold bezants, 14 lines without music, written space 390mm. by 280mm., written in an angular gothic bookhand, rubrics in red, one-line initials in red or blue, one 2-line initial in blue with reserved designs and red pen-flourishing, one large inked initial with cadels and trailing penwork including a bird’s head interlocked with the burnished gold ground, recto stamped with the folio number ‘100’, gold rubbed in places, vellum stained and cockled, one letter in third line with ink burn causing small holes, recto with remains of paper glued to edges

Another leaf from the same Antiphonary, stamped with the folio number ‘152’, appeared in our rooms, 6 December 2011, lot 19. Both resemble another Antiphonary leaf in the Nationalmuseum Stockholm (B 1213; Nordenfalk, Bokmålningar, 1979, no.37), which has been ascribed to Antonio di Niccolò di Lorenzo (1445-1527), but the two other leaves are in fact more probably by a related artist.