Anonymous Venetian illuminator - photo 1

Anonymous Venetian illuminator

Lot 8
10.07.2024 10:30UTC +00:00
Classic
Starting price
£ 6 000
AuctioneerCHRISTIE'S
Event locationUnited Kingdom, London
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Archive
ID 1249867
Lot 8 | Anonymous Venetian illuminator
Estimate value
£ 6 000 – 9 000
Anonymous Venetian illuminator
Bishop Saint, historiated initial B, cut from a choirbook, illuminated manuscript on vellum [Venice, c.1350]
An engaging and opulent initial is the work of a Venetian illuminator active in the middle of the 14th century; certain elements of its style are comparable with illuminations associated with the Master(s) of Giustino di Gherardino da Forlì.

155 x 116mm. The haloed Bishop, holding book and crozier, stands within the initial with pale pink stave and foliate extensions in blue, green and red, with dark blue infill on a burnished gold ground (some small losses to gold). Cut to shape and laid down, framed.

Illumination:
Various groupings of Venetian trecento cuttings, in different hands but nonetheless united by a common style, have been attributed to a workshop active from the 1360s to 1380s; reconstructions of these cuttings show the workshop is likely to have produced lavishly-illuminated liturgical commissions such as an Antiphonal with the Proper of Saints made for the Anthonites at Sant’Antonio in Castello in Venice (see Gaudenz Freuler, Italian Miniatures from the Twelfth to the Sixteenth Centuries, Silvana, 2013, vol 1, pp.370-77) and the Antiphonals of Pavia Cathedral (see Andrew Chen, ‘Giustino di Gherardino da Forlì and the Antiphoners of Pavia Cathedral’, Mitteilungen des Kunsthistorischen Institutes in Florenz, 59 (2017), pp. 409–19). The characterful modelling of the saint’s face, treatment of drapery and decorative features of the initial are comparable with the style of the Giustino group, particularly the ‘snowflake’ pattern in the infill (see, for example, the Crucifxion, Treviso, Biblioteca Comunale, Ms. 252, f.143v and Pavia, Archivio Storico Diocesano, Corale no.15, f.44v. An initial of St Peter attributed to a collaborator of the Master of the Antiphonals of Pavia Cathedral (Corale no.7, f.120), shows drapery similarly pooled at the base of the initial).

Place of origin:Italy, Europe
Auction house category:Books and manuscripts
Address of auction CHRISTIE'S
8 King Street, St. James's
SW1Y 6QT London
United Kingdom
Preview
10.07.2024 – 10.07.2024
Phone +44 (0)20 7839 9060
Email
4FQ.AYGKAGLUQ@FO3G@
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