Anonymous Alsatian illuminator - photo 1
Anonymous Alsatian illuminator - photo 2
Anonymous Alsatian illuminator - photo 3

Anonymous Alsatian illuminator

Lot 22
12.07.2023 00:00UTC +00:00
Classic
Sold
£ 4 032
AuctioneerCHRISTIE'S
Event locationUnited Kingdom, London
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ID 993187
Lot 22 | Anonymous Alsatian illuminator
Estimate value
£ 3 000 – 5 000
Anonymous Alsatian illuminator

St Michael weighing Souls, large historiated initial ‘L’ cut from an illuminated choirbook on vellum [Germany, possibly Alsace, c.1480]

An appealing example of Alsatian nonnenarbeiten.



138 x 120 mm, a cutting, trimmed to the edge of the initial (in the early 19th-century manner), the reverse with part of three lines of text in formal gothic textura script and music in square notation on four-line staves, comprising part of the feast of St Michael, ‘Stetit angelus iux[ta aram templi] habens thuribu[lum aureum in] manu sua’, the initial in gold on a black ground, enclosing a rosy-cheeked, blond-haired St Michael holding a cross-topped staff and a pair of scales, with a soul in one pan and the devil trying to pull down the other one (a few losses, especially of the gold). Mounted on brown velvet and framed.



Illumination:

The charming composition with a doll-like figure set on a grassy ground with pretty flowers can be found in manuscripts from Alsace. It is an appealing example of the sort of illumination often termed Nonnenarbeit, nuns’ work, which often carries an implication of amateurishness and naivety, as opposed to the sophistication of their professional male counterparts. Needless to say, the dismissive implications of such terminology have in recent decades been questioned and dispelled. This miniature is particularly close in style to a cutting of St John the Baptist, sold at Sotheby's, 2 July 2013, lot 30.



For other manuscripts illuminated in closely comparable styles, see J. Hamburger, ‘Magdalena Kremer, Scribe and Painter of the Choir and Chapter Books of the Dominican Convent of St Johannes-Baptista in Kirchheim unter Teck’, in The Medieval Book: Glosses from Friends & Colleagues of Christopher de Hamel , ed. by R.A. Linenthal et al., 2010, p. 124–49 (this discusses the work of a nun and later prioress who arrived at Kircheim, south of Stuttgart, from Silo in Séléstat, between Colmar and Strasbourg), and Krone und Schleier, exh. cat., 2005, no. 467, attributed to Sibylla von Bondorf, of Freiburg and Strasbourg.

Place of origin:Western Europe, Germany, Europe
Address of auction CHRISTIE'S
8 King Street, St. James's
SW1Y 6QT London
United Kingdom
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12.07.2023 – 12.07.2023
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