Details
FAKE CHOIRBOOK INITIAL, a PALIMPSEST over a Hebrew document, in Latin, ILLUMINATED MANUSCRIPT ON VELLUM
[?Italy, 19th or 20th century]An initial N opening the Introit Nos autem gloriari oportet with five lines of music of square notation on a four-line stave of red; verso blank (darkened, smudged and gold abraded).
The initial, with two superimposed scenes involving a miraculous bleeding icon of the Crucifixion, purports to be the opening of the Mass for Holy Thursday from a 14th-century Italian or Spanish choirbook Gradual. In fact the leaf is a reused Ketubah with the original Hebrew script and decoration visible at the lower part and in the left and right margins: it reveals that the recorded marriage took place in Rome, at the banks of the Tiber, in 5472 Anno Mundi, that is 1711-1712 CE.
[?Italy, 19th or 20th century]An initial N opening the Introit Nos autem gloriari oportet with five lines of music of square notation on a four-line stave of red; verso blank (darkened, smudged and gold abraded).
The initial, with two superimposed scenes involving a miraculous bleeding icon of the Crucifixion, purports to be the opening of the Mass for Holy Thursday from a 14th-century Italian or Spanish choirbook Gradual. In fact the leaf is a reused Ketubah with the original Hebrew script and decoration visible at the lower part and in the left and right margins: it reveals that the recorded marriage took place in Rome, at the banks of the Tiber, in 5472 Anno Mundi, that is 1711-1712 CE.