Burial of St Dominic, historiated initial from a Choirbook, in Latin [Italy (Venice), c.1400-10]

cutting, 95x98mm, vellum, initial ‘S’, reverse with remains of one line of text and music on a four-line red stave, rastrum 40mm, some losses to the gold leaf, illumination overall in very good condition

This Burial of St Dominic is very close to a cutting by CRISTOFORO CORTESE in Philadelphia (Free Library, M45:11; P. Palladino, Treasures of a Lost Art, 2003, fig.13) which has been added by Palladino – among others – to a group of cuttings linked by Gaudenz Freuler to a missing Antiphonary commissioned in 1401 for the newly founded Dominican nunnery of Corpus Domini in Venice (see Les Enluminures, Moyen Age, Renaissance, Middle Ages, 2001, nos.29-30). The illuminations for the Corpus Domini Choirbooks are counted among Cristoforo Cortese’s earliest known productions in the first decade of the 15th century. The present scene shows a Dominican novice in a white robe positioning the body of St Dominic, which lies in a coffin propped open by two rods. Especially striking is the fine modelling of the faces and the letter 'S' that terminates in a vigorous dragon's head. Cortese undertook many commissions for the scuole and lay confraternities of Venice and contributed to many Choirbooks throughout the Veneto. Characteristic of his later works of the 1420s and 1430s is a quicker and more linear execution. Examples of his early work are rare.