This unusual little Book of Hours from Lombardy with its charming 16^th-century binding and refined miniatures is closely related to the work of the Milanese artist, the Master of the “Vitae Imperatorum.”  Similar in style, technique, and palette to a Breviary in the Walters Art Museum in Baltimore (MS W.332), it was most likely made in Milan around 1430-1440. The iconographic program with portrait-style miniatures of the saints and the added section with the Mass of the Virgin points to a commission from an Augustinian community probably in the vicinity of Milan and Verona.

163 folios, three leaves missing in first quire, in gatherings of 8 (collation: 3+ i8-3, ii-xxi8 +3), three paper flyleaves at front and back, written by two hands (second hand begins with the Mass of the Virgin, f. 140, quire xix), written in one column on fine vellum in light and dark brown ink, in a regular southern textualis (rotunda) with northern influences, ruled in plummet and blind-tooled lines for 13 lines (justification 70 x 50 mm.), catchwords throughout, versals touched in yellow, a few cadels with refined brown penwork, rubrics in red, 1- and 2-line lombards in red and blue, 13 (of probably 14) 4-5-line historiated initials in mauve on burnished golden grounds with foliage decoration extending and curling into the margins, mostly with blue backgrounds and white penwork decoration, the last initial probably by another hand, all decoration in excellent condition with bright and shining colors, lower and upper margins perhaps negligibly trimmed, but still wide and clean, the manuscript is overall in crisp condition, a cutting from an older Italian liturgical manuscript with a decorated initial E to open the vigils of the Apostles (?) tipped in before f. 1 obscures the beginning of the text.  Sixteenth-century Italian binding, dark calf over cardboard, gilt tooled with a central medallion and the initials CM, three raised bands, spine broken and worn, upper part of head and bits of tail missing, edges gilt, one of two clasps missing.  Dimensions 115 x 88 mm.

Provenance

1. The original provenance is difficult to establish, as the manuscript has no calendar, and the litany, for the use of Rome, is unspecific. However, the suffrages and some of the miniatures point to Augustinian use. The litany opens with a depiction of St. Augustine without mentioning the saint’s name, while the suffrages open with St. Augustine and the Office of the Blessed Virgin also follows Augustinian use.  The rubric for the last prayer to St. Augustine is complemented by a later annotation “patris nostril” so that we may assume that the manuscript belonged to an Augustinian convent or parish in or near Milan, as the style of the miniatures and the script point to a Milanese workshop. The section beginning with the Mass of the Virgin was probably added only slightly later, including the miniature that imitates the original artistic style but is by a different hand.

2. An elaborate ownership entry with an attached paper seal on the verso of the last leaf points to Milan: “Ex Mediolanii mcccclxxvi” (surrounding inscription of paper seal illegible, the coat of arms is crowned by a bishop’s mitre).

3. A red wax seal with no imprint once perhaps bore another paper seal that is now lost on the second front flyleaf.

4. Entry in a 17^th-or 18^th-century hand in light brown ink on the first rear flyleaf, either by a librarian or a book dealer, “Constudifogli Manuscritto 165/di 12 miniature figurate a capilettera in _vo (?),” indicating that the manuscript then consisted of 165 leaves.

5. Ownership entry on verso of 3rd flyleaf: “Dono dell’’amica D^a Margherita Bossi, 20. Marzo 1837”.

6. Pencil inscription in French from the late 19^th or early 20^th century on the second front flyleaf: “14e siècle italien.”

7. For at least the past 150 years the manuscript has been in the collection of an English family:  20^th-century pencil annotations in English, probably from the last owner: “probably end of 14^th century// [a very fine brown line forming a human profile] Italian book of hours//mid Italian//16^th binding [in a box: CT Mayon (?)] end of 14^th century to c 1410 at half, 2nd section a bit later//poorer quality illumination//Milanese ownership in 1476 + family seal// St. George key link to original owner + place of origin.”

8. Private Collection, USA.

Text

ff. 1-50, Hours of the Virgin for the use of Rome with ff. 1-10 Matins (incomplete); ff. 10-22v Lauds; ff. 23-27, Prime; ff. 27-30v Terce; ff. 31-34, Sext; ff. 34-37v,None; ff. 37v-45, Vespers; ff. 45v-50, Compline;

ff. 50-69, additional prayers, psalms and readings;

ff. 70-107v, Office of the Dead;

ff. 108-120, Penitential Psalms;

ff. 120-126v, Litany;

ff. 126v-132, Additional Psalms;

ff. 132-136, Short Hours of the Cross;

ff. 136-139v, Short Hours of the Holy Spirit;

ff. 140-147v, Mass of the Virgin; 

ff. 147v-154v, Office of the Blessed Virgin (Augustinian use);

ff. 154v-158v, Suffrages, including St. Augustine, St. Martha, St. Nicolas of Toletino, St. Monacha, Peace of the Lord;

ff. 158v-163, Prayer to St. Augustine.

Illustrations

Historiated initials:

f. 10, St. Jerome; 

f. 23, St. Peter of Verona;

f. 27, St. Scholastica (the abbacy staff she was originally holding in her hand was apparently retouched soon after the miniature was completed);

f. 31, St. Ambrose;

f. 34, St. Francis;

f. 37v, St. John the Baptist with a scroll inscribed “Ecce (agnus) dei”;

f. 45v, St. Benedict of Nursia (?);

f. 70, a skull on mount Golgotha;

f. 108, King David in Prayer;

f. 120v, a bishop, probably St. Augustine;

f. 132, the Holy Cross with cloth, nails and lance;

f. 136, white dove of Holy Spirit;

f. 140, Madonna and Child.

This very charming and well-preserved Book of Hours contains a cycle of half-length busts of the saints – either important monastic saints or doctors of the church – introducing the different hours of the Virgin instead of the more traditional sequence for the Office of the Virgin with the Annunciation, Visitation, Nativity, Annunciation to the Shepherds, Adoration of the Magi and Flight into Egypt.  Whether the St. George, mentioned in the pencil notes on the first front flyleaf (cf. Provenance 7), refers to a now lost miniature or is a misinterpretation of one of the other depictions of saints, remains an open question. Although Saints Francis, Benedict and Scholastica belong to a different order, the presence of the Dominican friar St. Peter of Verona, St. Ambrose as teacher of St. Augustine, and St. Augustine suggests that the original owner of the book came an Augustinian community in Lombardy, possibly in the vicinity of Milan and Verona.  All the saints represent monastic ideas and theological teachings.

All the figures, with the exception of St. Augustine opening the Litany, are shown in strict profile, facing the text. Most of the male faces share an almost identical contour from their foreheads to their noses, upper lips, and beards towards their chins (e.g. St. Jerome, St. John the Baptist, King David). Their eyes are also similar. With delicate white brushstrokes, the illuminator delineated sculpted features consisting of high cheek-bones and characteristic nasolabial folds, highlighting the bright faces to contrast with the darker clothes of the figures. The haloes of the saints are executed in burnished gold standing out on blue backgrounds.  The hands tend to be quite small, especially when the bishops, abbots, or abbesses hold a staff.  The painter uses a black contour line to set off the faces and haloes from the background.  The initials prefacing the Office of the Dead, the Hours of the Holy Spirit, and the Hours of the Cross were perhaps executed by another hand.

The final initial depicting the Madonna with Child seems to have been added at a slightly later stage and by another workshop, because the style of both the figure and the initial deviates from the rest of the initials in the series.  As this section of the manuscript was also written by another hand and comes at the beginning of a new quire, we can assume it was added later at the request of the first owner. Along with the Mass of the Virgin, it adds to the Marian character of the book and thus again points to Augustinian use, as it was St. Augustine who defended Mary’s virginity.

Figural initials with bust-portraits of saints or teachers occur as early as the fourteenth century in Italian Books of Hours and are typical in Lombard and Milanese book illumination of the fifteenth century. While the portraits of kings, teachers, and prophets in the cuttings of MS Add. 18196, ff. 71-77, in the British Library in London, executed in the circle of the Master of the Arcimboldi Missal exhibit the same concept and are also very similar in technique, palette, and style; they are probably the only witnesses to the longevity of a number of patterns that are rooted deeply in Milanese illumination of the fifteenth century. The Master of the Arcimboldi Missal (active in Milan at the end of the fifteenth century) was named after the splendidly illuminated Missal kept in Milan, Biblioteca Capitolare, MS X.D.I.13, which bears the coat of arms of Guidantonio Arcimboldi, Archbishop of Milan from 1489-97.  Focusing on the contours of forehead, nose, beard, and chin, including the nasolabial fold of the figures in profile, there can be no doubt that the portraits in the cuttings are linked to those in the present manuscripts. However, the traces of the floral decoration of the cuttings in the British Library point to the late fifteenth century, while the austere, but nonetheless typical decoration in the present Book of Hours belongs to an earlier period. 

The earliest example known of these cycles with portraits of saints, from the Veneto in the fourteenth century is in the Vatican, Chigi Cod. D. IV.52; another is by a follower of the Master of the Vitae Imperatorum is Chigi Cod. D. IV. 55 (Fig. 1; see also Manzari, 2022), and a third, with busts of Franciscan saints, signed and dated by the scribe and illuminated by the Master Vitae Imperatorum for a Clarissan nun is Bologna, BUB, Ms. 1148.   Perhaps they offered a means by which the owner could contemplate the saints while saying his or her devotions.

In fact, the style of the mauve initials on square burnished golden grounds, with their extending and curling acanthus leaves in red and green, resembles that in a Breviary in the Walters Art Museum in Baltimore (MS W.332). The Sanctorale of this Breviary has been profusely illuminated with bust portraits of saints in initials.  The form of the initials, the blue backgrounds with white penwork and the foliage extensions, are so similar that we must assume at least that the same workshop executed the secondary decoration in both codices. Not all of the depictions of saints in the Baltimore Breviary appear in full profile, but some of them do (such as Fig. 2, St. Paul, f. 86). The figure of St. Paul in this 6-line initial is so similar to our David and our St. Jerome that at least an artistic connection between the two illuminators is beyond doubt. While some of the faces in the Baltimore manuscript seem to be a bit softer, the figures’ hands are also very small in proportion, and the shape of their haloes is literally the same, as are the palm leaves of martyrs. The same holds true for gowns and cloaks that are equally modelled with highlighting white lines and sometimes liquid gold. In addition, the palette seems to be the same in both manuscripts. The draperies resemble the ones in our manuscript as well. The floral extensions of the initials are very similar in all the miniatures and usually show one green and one red leaf with a spiraling curl at the end. They are highlighted with liquid gold.

The illumination in the Breviary from the Walters Art Museum is attributed to the Master of the “Vitae Imperatorum” and was probably made around 1430. This illuminator was active from 1430 to 1453 in Milan and is to be counted among the most famous artists in Lombardy of his time.  The artist is named after a copy of Suetonius, today at the Bibliothèque national de France in Paris (MS It. 131) dated December 1431. The master was trained by Tomasino da Vimercate and worked for Filippo Maria Visconti and his court. Among his known masterpieces are the Bible of Mary of Savoy (in collaboration with Belbello da Pavia, Chambéry, Bibliothèque municipale) and the illustrations of Dante’s Inferno for Filippo Visconti, now in Paris (BnF MS it. 2617). Anna Melograni tried to trace the œuvre of this master after Pietro Toesca first approached an outline of his style in 1912.  The present manuscript emerges as a new attribution to his workshop.

We thank Francesca Manzari for her contributions.

Literature

Alexander, J.J.G. Studies in Italian Manuscript Illumination, London, 2002, 22-54, 382-84, p. 33, n. 30.

Lollini, Fabrizio on the Master of the Vitae Imperatorum in: Dizionario biografico dei miniatori Italiani: Secoli IX-XVI, ed. Milvia Bollati, Milan, 2004, pp. 587-89

Manzari, F.  “La devozione in Italia tra Due e Trecento:  un breviario per i Fieschi, tra Genova e Avignone, note inedite di Opicinus di Canistris e la diffusione dell’ufficio della Vergine in Veneto,” in Miscellaneo Bibliothecae Apostolicae Vaticanae XXVII (Studi e Testi, 553), ed. Maria Critelli, pp. 153-216, Vatican City, 2022.

Manzari, F.  "Italian Books of Hours and Prayer Books in the Fourteenth Century," in Books of Hours Reconsidered, eds. S. Hindman and J. H. Marrow, London, 2013 (Studies in Medieval and early Renaissance Art History 72), pp. 153-209.

Manzari, F. "Pour une géographie des aires de production des livre d'heures en Italie au XIVe s. État des recherches et nouvelles acquisitions," in Des Heures pour prier. Les Livres d’heures en Europe méridionale du Moyen Age à la Renaissance, ed. C. Raynaud, Préf. M. Pastoureau, Paris 2014, pp. 21-41
https://www.academia.edu/10192804/F_Manzari_Pour_une_g%C3%A9ographie_des_aires_de_production_des_livre_dheures_en_Italie_au_XIVe_s_%C3%89tat_des_recherches_et_nouvelles_acquisitions_in_Des_Heures_pour_prier_Les_Livres_d_heures_en_Europe_m%C3%A9ridionale_du_Moyen_Age_%C3%A0_la_Renaissance_ed_C_Raynaud_Pr%C3%A9f_M_Pastoureau_Paris_2014_pp_21_41

Manzari, F.  "Libri d’ore e strumenti per la devozione italiani e nordeuropei nel Tardo Medioevo: temi e aspetti della ricerca e della catalogazione," in La catalogazione dei manoscritti miniati come strumento di conoscenza, cur. S. Maddalo, M. Torquati, Roma 2010, pp. 141-160.
https://www.academia.edu/10192635/F_Manzari_Libri_d_ore_e_strumenti_per_la_devozione_italiani_e_nordeuropei_nel_Tardo_Medioevo_temi_e_aspetti_della_ricerca_e_della_catalogazione_in_La_catalogazione_dei_manoscritti_miniati_come_strumento_di_conoscenza_cur_S_Maddalo_M_Torquati_Roma_2010_pp_141_160

Melograni, A. “Appunti di miniatura lombarda. Richerche sul Maestro delle Vitae Imperatorum,” in Storia dell’Arte 70 (1990), pp. 273-314.

Melograni, A. “Due nuovi codici del Magister Vitae Imperatorum.II (Illuminatore dei due manoscritti vaticani),”Aevum 70 (1996), pp. 295-301.

Palladino, P. Treasures of a Lost Art: Italian Manuscript Painting of the Middle Ages and the Renaissance, Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, 2003, pp. 107-109.

Online Resources

Detailed record and images for London, British Library, Add. MS 18196, ff. 71-77 http://bl.uk/catalogues/illuminatedmanuscripts/record.asp?MSID=19028&CollID=27&NStart=18196

Vatican, Chigi Cod. D. IV.52, fully digitalizef https://digi.vatlib.it/view/MSS_Chig.D.IV.52

Paris, BnF, MS it. 131, illuminated pages http://visualiseur.bnf.fr/CadresFenetre?O=COMP-1&M=notice 

Baltimore, Walters Art Museum, MS W. 332, Breviary with 77 online images of miniatures http://art.thewalters.org/detail/13390//

Francesca Manzari and Lola Massola, “Italian Books of Hours/ Libri d'ore italiani” (Highly recommended: the essential resource on the topic today, including extensive bibliographic references, descriptions, and links) libridoreitaliani_Manzari (google.com)