Berardo da Teramo (fl. 1325-1350)
10.12.2025 12:00UTC +00:00
Classic
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CHRISTIE'S| Auctioneer | CHRISTIE'S |
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ID 1514348
Los 34 | Berardo da Teramo (fl. 1325-1350)
Schätzwert
4000GBP £ 4 000 – 6 000
The Virgin blessed by the hand of God, initial ‘B’ on a leaf from an antiphonal, illuminated manuscript on vellum [Italy, Teramo, 2nd quarter 14th century]
A new addition to the handful of known leaves with historiated initials excised from one of the most important illuminated manuscripts produced in Abruzzo: a lost antiphonal commissioned for the Benedictine monastery of San Benedetto a Gabiano, the only known work of the Abruzzese illuminator Berardo da Teramo (fl. Abruzzo, 1325-1350).
580 x 392mm. The initial ‘B’ opening ‘Benedicta tu in mulieribus', ten lines of text and music, reverse (originally the recto) with 6 initials alternately in blue and red with red or purple penwork flourishing and folio no XXVIII in red. Mounted.
Provenance:
(1) The parent manuscript was made for Benedictine monastery of San Benedetto a Gabiano, near Teramo. Its opening leaf, now at the Cini collection, Venice (Inv. 22084) carries at the top of the page the inscription: 'Dominus Berardus de Teramo fecit hoc opus', and below ‘Archipresbiter Jacobus de sancto Flaviano fecit fieri hoc opus pro anima fratris Mathei propositi Gabiani cuius anima benedicatur’ (Archpresbyter Giacomo of San Flaviano had this made for the soul of brother Matteo curate of Gabiano whose soul be blessed). Peter Kidd (see P. Kidd, Medieval Manuscripts Provenance, blogpost 13 March 2022, 'The Antiphonal of Berardo da Teramo in 1924') recently discovered that the parent manuscript was still intact in 1924 and sold as:
(2) 'The Property of a Gentleman', Sotheby's, 15 December 1924, lot 530. The manuscript was described as having 223 leaves, with foliation starting at VII, with 15 large and 19 smaller historiated initials. It was acquired by Quaritch for Tamaro de Marinis, but by the middle of the 1920s leaves had evidently been removed: some were owned by John Murray in Florence in 1925, others by Ulrico Hoepli in Milan in 1927, and another appeared in Amsterdam at Mensing et Fils in 1929.
Illumination:
Nothing further is known of Berardo da Teramo and no corpus of work can be securely attributed to him beside the sumptuous antiphonal commissioned by Archpresbyter Giacomo of San Flaviano (for a discussion of the group of surviving leaves see P. Palladino, Treasures of a Lost Art, Metropolitan Museum, 2003, pp. 34-37; G. Freuler, Italian Miniatures from the Twelfth to the Sixteenth Centuries, II, no 66; and F. Manzari, in Le miniature della Fondazione Giorgio Cini: pagine, ritagli, manoscritti, 2016, cat. nos. 67a-h). Evidently he was capable of very fine and expressive illumination, in a style apparently inspired by the art of the Angevin court at Naples at this time, where Neapolitan and Abruzzese illuminators worked closely together.
This leaf is one of only three of the 19 leaves with smaller historiated initials described in the 1924 catalogue currently known.
Thus far, 15 other leaves have been identified: eight are at the Cini collection in Venice, Inv. 22084-22090 and 22185; one is in Tokyo, Museum for Western Art, Naito Collection; one is at Mead Art Museum, Amherst College, MA, Inv. Inv. 1961.16; and five are in private collections in the US and Europe (for a more comprehensive description see Peter Kidd's blogpost, mentioned above).
| Herkunftsort: | Italien, Europa |
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| Kategorie des Auktionshauses: | Handschriften des Mittelalters und der Renaissance, Bücher und Handschriften |
| Herkunftsort: | Italien, Europa |
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| Kategorie des Auktionshauses: | Handschriften des Mittelalters und der Renaissance, Bücher und Handschriften |
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