Description
One of more than twenty cuttings from a dismantled Antiphonal containing the Proper of Time and the Saints, this initial ‘M’ illustrates Christ’s entry into Jerusalem which took place a few days before his Crucifixion. Narrated in all four Gospels, Jesus Christ rides into Jerusalem to celebrate Passover. As he enters the city, the crowd throws down palm branches (note the boy in the tree on the left) and lays down cloaks on the ground (behind the vertical bar of the initial) to celebrate the coming of the savior, the “king,” our Lord. According to the Gospels of Mark and Luke, he rode into town on a donkey, but here he rides a frisky colt, the animal described in Matthew; it is Matthew also who mentions two animals, the second of which appears in our initial just behind the mount Jesus rides. The flat blue acanthus outlined in white and pink ornament with white tracery is surrounded by a highly burnished gold ground bordered by gold circular and oval bezants.
Although the Entry into Jerusalem is usually commemorated in the Christian liturgy on Palm Sunday in Holy Week before Easter, none of the liturgical chants for this feast begins with the letter ‘M’. Thus, it most likely introduced the antiphon of the third Nocturn of Passion Sunday with the words (Matthew 26:18): “Magister dicit: Tempus meum prope est apud te facio Pascha cum discipulis meis...” (Jesus said: My appointed time is near. I am going to celebrate the Passover with my disciples). The illustration of this chant with the Entry into Jerusalem is appropriate because it begins his Passion and introduces Holy Week. Our cutting falls in a sequence reconstructed by Freuler, and subsequently studied by Alai, right before the Resurrection of Christ (Berlin, Kupferstichkabinett, min 685) from the Easter series. Other scenes depicted for Lent and Easter also employ atypical narratives to accompany the chants for specific feasts, confirming Freuler’s judgement that commission for the Choir Books was a prestigious one, requiring special instructions, with the result that the completed volumes display a high degree of originality.
There can be no question that this initial fits securely with the others in the group published by Freuler and reassessed by Alai. Compare the structure of the initial, its ornamentation, the stature and treatment of the figures, the facial types, blue ground, and the palette with another initial ‘M’ from the same series, the Beheading of John the Baptist and the Feast of Salome (Berlin, Kupferstichkabinett, min 1244). The latter initial, along with David in Prayer (Berlin, Kupferstichkabinett, min 679) and three others display some distinctive stylistic features that led Freuler to suggest that they underwent an early, still-medieval restoration. Upon further consideration, however, we now believe that a different hand intervened, perhaps completing work that was left unfinished; his modifications appear in the stark white modeling of the folds in the drapery of the figures and in the blue acanthus of these initials. As additional cuttings and even intact volumes by this individualistic workshop come to light, the separation of hands, the identification of parent volumes, and the study of their sources will bear further fruit.
We are grateful to Gaudenz Freuler for his expertise.
provenance
literature
Published:
Freuler in Tartuferi, Angelo, ed. L’Eredita di Giotto: Arte a Firenze, 1340–1375. Florence, 2008, no. 54, 76–85, 224–31;
Alai, Beatrice. Le miniature Italiane del Kupferstichkabinett di Berlino. Florence, 2019, cat. 27–28, 174–78
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Maestro Orcagnesco, Italy, Florence, active 1345–1370
Active in Florence for more than two decades, the Maestro Orcagnesco emerges as one of the most idiosyncratic and intriguing of the Tuscan illuminators working in the third quarter of the fourteenth century. Gaudenz Freuler reconstructed his career, beginning with an early work, a Temptation of Job in an Antiphonal in Florence (Museum of San Marco, Cod. 564, f. 13v). Freuler dated this work around 1345–1350 and saw in it the influence of the Master of the Dominican Effigies and Jacopo del Casentino (1330–1380), in whose milieu he proposed the artist was probably trained (Fig. 1). The artist’s major work, a once richly illuminated Antiphonal reconstructed by Freuler, survives in more than twenty cuttings, of which the majority are in the Kupferstichkabinett of Berlin (mins. 639, 642–645, 650, 676–680, 685, 1243, 1244). In these cuttings, the artist manifests an interest in lively narratives, expressive energetic figures, elongated facial types with pronounced pupils in large eyes, and flat decorative designs for the initials with surrounding fanciful ornamentation. He also exhibits a deep familiarity with the work of Andrea Orcagna (1320–1368), the prominent Florentine painter, sculptor, and architect active at mid-century—hence his notname (Fig. 2). At the same time, some of his ornamentation recalls that of the Neapolitan school of illumination, for example Cristoforo Orimina (fl. 1335–1360), the best-known illuminator of the Angevin court of Naples. Beatrice Alai explains these Neapolitan influences by the sojourn of a Tuscan painter, Niccolò di Tommaso, in Casaluce, and she notes further a Bolognese influence in two of the fragments of the dismantled Antiphonal. Alai concludes that the Maestro Orcagnesco’s eclectic Tuscan style skillfully blends central and southern Italian tendencies with a reinterpretation of the monumental art of Andrea Orcagna in manuscript illumination.