Miniatures

This remarkable initial comes from what must have been a large Choir Book illuminated by Giovanni Pietro da Cemmo. The initial depicts a funeral service: a priest asperges a dead man lying on his bier, dressed and coiffed as a lawyer, two acolytes hold the cross and candles, and six mourners bear witness to the ceremony. The composition stands out for its harmonious palette with bright red and soft blue predominating, the suggestive and painterly modeling of the faces, and the successful restitution of depth, as the scene extends into an atmospheric landscape in which a city emerges in the distance. The multicolored, exuberant initial is also individualistic. Its pink stem and foliage in red, green, and blue are placed on a rectangular ground painted in the imitation of marble, covered with crisp articulated acanthus leaves, highlighted with liquid gold, and framed with black. Appropriate to the Feast of All Souls, the initial ‘C’ with its funeral service introduced the antiphon at Matins on October 31 with the chant “Convertere Domine” (Turn thee, O Lord), which was followed by Psalm 6, of which the incipit is on the verso “Domine ne in furore tuo…” (O Lord, rebuke me not…).

Both the decorative features of the initial and the narrative components of the enclosed scene share features with manuscript illumination attributed to Giovanni Pietro da Cemmo. The distinctive short canon of the figures, their small, rounded heads, and expressive facial features underlined in black, characterize miniatures of the early phase; compare the central praying figure in the Funeral Service with the executioner in the Martyrdom of Saint Lawrence in Melbourne (Baillieu Library, 60B/5 ). Our artist’s characteristic tall trees with their sparse branches widely spaced, present in his frescos, also appear, although not frequently, in miniatures of this early group, such as the Entry into Jerusalem in Milan (Biblioteca Ambrosiana, INF 49). The artist’s unique decorative vocabulary can be found in the initial of the Visitation, also from this early group (Biblioteca Ambrosiana, INF 55).

Most of these features come together in what must be considered the artist’s chef d’oeuvre, the Antiphonals now in Cremona. The frontispiece of one of the Cremona Antiphonals (Archivio Storico Diocesano, Cod. XVI, f. 4) includes an atmospheric landscape receding in the far distance and populated by these strange trees, dotted stones (?) on the grass in the foreground, and crisp acanthus modulated to change colors at the outer edges of the leaves, as well as faux marble columns for the initials. Mario Marubbi notes that the signature acanthus of this artist is adapted from his fresco paintings. There are some similarities also with manuscripts said to date from the last phase of the artist’s career, as seen in the manuscript now in Bergamo (Biblioteca Civica, Cassa f. 2.3, f. 10). Mario Marubbi suggests that the cutting likely belongs to the series of dispersed choir books from Brescia. Without a first-hand study of all the disparate cuttings—still poorly published and often not in color—as well as a thorough examination of the series of Antiphonals in Cremona, it is not possible to identify a parent manuscript for our expressive and moving funeral scene, but it surely contributes an important work for the ongoing reconstruction of the career of this distinctive artist.

We are grateful to Milvia Bollati, Mario Marubbi, and Laura Zabeo for their expertise.