A Cathedral Canon in and initial L from a Choir Book

Anonymous Artist

A Cathedral Canon, initial 'L' from a Choir Book

Northeastern Italy, probably Emilia, c. 1450-1475

c. 75 x 75 mm.

$7500.00

This cutting comes from a Choir Book, showing a half-length figure of a canon dressed in red cape and green mantle, indicating his membership in a cathedral chapter. Turning three-quarter, the figure gestures by raising his large hands. “Dentelle” decoration appears on the left of the pink initial ‘L,’ with white tracery painted on the blue ground behind the figure.

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Description

This cutting comes from a Choir Book, showing a half-length figure of a canon dressed in red cape and green mantle, indicating his membership in a cathedral chapter. Turning three-quarter, the figure gestures by raising his large hands. "Dentelle" decoration appears on the left of the pink initial 'L,' with white tracery painted on the blue ground behind the figure.

The cutting was most likely made in northeastern Italy in Emilia, in the area of Padua and Ferrara in the decades just following the middle of the fifteenth century. Describing a sister leaf, a cutting now in the Staatliche Graphische Sammlung in Munich, Bauer-Eberhardt notes comparisons with Bolognese illumination, particularly in the white tracery applied to the ground, and dates the cutting in the first half of the fifteenth century. The particular treatment of the face and hands, outlined with black contours, is actually characteristic of the work of an artist known as the Maestro of the Pontifical of the Biblioteca Capitolare of Padua (compare La Spezia, Museo Amedeo Lia, inv. 547 and 577) and with the Canozi of Lendinara. Even closer is the decoration of a manuscript of Lattanzio in the Biblioteca Marciana in Venice (MS lat. II, 75 = 2198, f. 854r), and the style of the artists responsible for the decoration of a series of volumes containing the Lives of Plutarch in the Biblioteca Malatestiana of Cesena.

Although the style can thus be localized with certainty, the identification of the artist remains unknown, nor is it known what textual passage in the Choir Book the cutting introduced.

Sister leaves: Munich, Staatliche Graphische Sammlung, inv. no. 40158 (Lugt 1094), acquired 1920 [U. Bauer-Eberhardt, Staatliche Graphische Sammlung, Die italienischen Miniaturen des 13.-16. Jahrhunderts, Munich, 1984, no. 42, p. 79].

Literature

Unpublished; compare F. Lollini, "Le Vite di Plutarco alla Malatestiana X.XV.1, S.XV.2 e S.XV.3. Proposte e osservazioni per il periodo di trnsizione tra tardo gotico e rinascimento," in Libraria Domini. I manoscritti della Biblioteca Malatestiana: testi e decorazioni, atti del convegno, Bologna, 1995, pp. 189-224.