AUCTION: Valuable Printed Books and Manuscripts. Christie’s (8 King Street, St Jame’s, London), 23 November 2011.
The following entries are of particular interest:
Lot 2
ASCENSION OF CHRIST, historiated initial P on a leaf from an Antiphonal, in Latin, ILLUMINATED MANUSCRIPT ON VELLUM
Estimate £7,000 – £10,000 ($10,962 – $15,660)
[Arezzo, c.1280-1300]
505 x 325mm. The initial containing the half-length figure of Christ clad in rich robes of blue and green, his right hand raised in blessing, framed by a mandorla and borne by two angels, below him five apostles, their heads and left hands raised to the skies in adoration; eight lines written in black ink in a gothic bookhand below eight lines of music of square notation on a four-line stave of red, rubrics in red, a single one-line flourished initial on the recto and three on the verso (some marginal browning and staining, ink on recto slightly faded).
This leaf came from the Temporal section of an Antiphonal where the initial opened the Responsory ‘Post passionem suam per dies quadraginta’ from matins for the feast of the Ascension. The rich, colourful palette and the style of composition, with the foliage extensions and the delicate, mournful expressions of the figures, are characteristic of contemporary central Italian manuscript illumination. It can be associated with four other leaves, identical in style, decoration and measurement, which Carl Nordenfalk and subsequently Roberta Passalacqua ascribed to central Italy, possibly Arezzo, during the late thirteenth century. It is likely that all of these were taken from the same Antiphonal or series of Antiphonals: an initial V with the Assumption previously in the Lehman collection (Pia Palladino, Treasures of a Lost Art, 2003, no 1); an initial A with the Three Marys at the Tomb in the National Gallery of Art, Washington (B-18, 760); an initial H with the Nativity in the Cini Collection, Venice (Coll. Hoepli min.x, Cod A, Antiphonarium); and an initial I with a monk holding an aspergillum in the Free Library, Philadelphia (Lewis EM 68:1).
Lot 3
ASCENSION OF CHRIST, historiated initial V cut from a Gradual, ILLUMINATED MANUSCRIPT ON VELLUM
Estimate £8,000 – £12,000 ($12,528 – $18,792)
[north-eastern Italy, last quarter 13th century]
91 x 77mm. The initial V on burnished gold ground framed in orange and white, with a full-length figure of Christ clad in green robes against a blue background seated in a blue and red mandorla borne by two angels, below the twelve apostles in orange, blue and green robes gazing upwards; the verso with two partial lines of text below two lines of square musical notation on a four-line stave of red (gold ground slightly rubbed). In a Renaissance style frame.
This initial opens the introit of the Mass for the Ascension: ‘Viri galilei quid admiramini aspicientes in celum…’. The overarching aesthetic of the composition, its Eastern figures with large eyes, straight noses and formulaic postures, appears strongly influenced by Byzantine art. This has led to an earlier suggestion of an origin in the Veneto, and yet the palette, with the reliance on strong shades of green, red and blue seems more characteristic of German illumination of the 13th century. Perhaps an origin in a border region would account for this apparent mix of influences in this handsome and accomplished work.
Lot 5
APOSTLE, historiated initial E on a leaf from a Gradual, ILLUMINATED CHOIRBOOK ON VELLUM
Estimate £3,000 – £5,000 ($4,698 – $7,830)
[Lombardy, probably Milan, c.1405]
482 x 332mm (leaf), 81 x 81mm (initial, not including sprays). Initial and eight lines of music and text, one large flourished initial on recto, the verso with two large flourished initials and an illuminated initial (slight rubbing of gold on halo, small pigment losses from background and sprays and show-through of the red ink from the music-staves).
This initial opens the introit for Mass on the feast of an apostle from the Common of Saints. It is the work of an artist first defined, and named, in relation to a Book of Hours in Modena. The certain recognition of one of the manuscripts attributed to him, a volume in Cambridge (Fitzwilliam Museum, CFM 9), as the book recorded in payments made by the Cathedral of Milan to the illuminator Tomasino da Vimercate, allowed him to be identified: K. Sutton, ‘The Master of the Modena Hours, Tomasino da Vimercate and the Ambrosianae of the Cathedral of Milan’, The Burlington Magazine, 133 (1991), pp.87-91.
Tomasino’s lively compositions, decorative vocabulary and bright, blonde palette reveal an enduring debt to the previous generation of illuminators who worked for the Visconti court. These features make for a style of immediate appeal, and Tomasino dominated Milanese manuscript illumination from the 1390s until at least 1417. In addition to ecclesiastical patrons he too worked for members of the Visconti court and chancery and undertook the illustration of secular as well as religious manuscripts.
Lot 7
ANNUNCIATION, miniature from a Book of Hours, ILLUMINATED MANUSCRIPT ON VELLUM
Estimate £4,000 – £6,000 ($6,264 – $9,396)
[Florence, c.1470]
187 x 117mm overall, miniature 75 x 52mm. (Cut edge at right into top of border, slight cockling, fine crease down Virgin’s mantle, tiny pigment losses from her hair, rear wall, curtain rail and of the gold from the framing). Card mount.
This miniature, on a verso, would have faced the opening of the Office of the Virgin in a Book of Hours. The palette, decorative vocabulary — including the plump-thighed putti — and the graceful agitation of the drapery are all characteristic of the work of Francesco di Antonio del Chierico, the preferred illuminator of the greatest institutional and private patrons of Florence from the 1450s until his death in 1484. The elegance of the composition and the sensitive evocation of an exchange between Gabriel and the Virgin demonstrate why his work was so sought after.
The coat of arms in the lower margin shows that the manuscript was made for a member of the Cresci family, of whom the most prominent at this date was Migliore, poet and friend of Marsilio Ficino, who became Prior of Florence in 1470. The Cresci family properties included the Villa Schifanoia in Fiesole.
The recto carries the stamp of the Museo Cavaleri, the enormous Milanese collection put together by Michele Cavaleri that was purchased by Enrico Cernuschi (d.1896) in the 1870s and dispersed by his heirs.
Lot 8
ISAIAH, historiated initial P on a cutting from a Gradual, ILLUMINATED MANUSCRIPT ON VELLUM
Estimate £12,000 – £18,000 ($18,792 – $28,188)
[Lombardy, c.1505]
168 x 173 overall. This initial opened the introit,’Populos Sion…’, for Mass on the second Sunday in Advent, remnants of text visible on the reverse are from the offertory and hymn for the first Sunday in Advent (slight craquelure of gold, retouching to small losses from blue background). Framed. Provenance: Lord Northwick, his sale Sotheby’s London 16 November 1925, lot 151; Robert Lehman, New York, exhibited, Treasures of a Lost Art, Metropolitan Museum of Art, NY, 2003, no 70, exh. cat. P. Palladino.
This is one of a group of cuttings, now dispersed through collections in the US and Europe, that have been traced to a series of choirbooks made for the Olivetan monastery of SS Angelo e Niccolò at Villanova Sillaro near Lodi in Lombardy. Consistently handsome and impressive works, their illuminator has been named the Master B.F. from the monogram on other initials by his hand.
Although a large body of work has been attributed to him, most of it for Olivetan monasteries or for members of the Milanese court and datable to the first decades of the 16th century, no suggestions for his identity or artistic formation are universally accepted: C. Quattrini in Dizionario Biografico degli miniatori italiani, ed. M. Bollati, 2004, pp.438-42.
The debt to the de’ Predis workshop and Giovan Pietro Birago seem evident in the crisp linearity and intense colour of his style, while the impact of Leonardo’s presence in Milan had an enduring influence upon his compositions and figure types. It was no doubt these features combined with invention, technical mastery and elegance that led to Master B.F.’s position in Milan as the most sought-after illuminator of his generation.
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