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Details
NATIVITY WITH THE VIRGIN AND JOSEPH ADORING THE CHRISTCHILD, cutting from an historiated initial, ILLUMINATED MANUSCRIPT ON VELLUM
[Lombardy, 1480-1500]
52 x 43mm (overall). The Virgin kneels beside the infant Christ with Joseph behind her and, to the right, three small angels singing from a hymnbook, behind them are the ruins of a classical building, traces of green initial staves at the edges; on the reverse lines of text in a gothic bookhand (cracking to surface of impasted green pigment of Virgin's mantle-lining and small pigment loss from Joseph's forehead, spot on Virgin's cheek, remains of laid down paper on the reverse).
This exquisite and delicately painted scene was the infill of an historiated initial. It is likely to have opened a Mass or Office for Christmas in a Missal or Breviary: it may have been either the Introit 'Puer natus est' or the first lection 'Primo tempore'.
This is a fine example of the style of the illuminator known as the Master of Crescenzago from his work in a series of six choirbooks copied between 1487 and 1491 for the church of the Lateran canons of Santa Maria Rossa in Crescenzago (Milan, Archivio di Sant'Ambrogio, Mss M.45-50): Pier Luigi Mulas in Dizionario biografico dei miniatori italiani, ed. Milvia Bollati, 2004, pp.679-80. His style is a sophisticated and classicising development of Milanese illumination of the third quarter of the fifteenth century.
One of the other manuscripts containing this Master's work is the Diurnale for the Certosa of Pavia now in The Hague (Koninklijke Bibliotheek, Ms 135 J 8), which presents particularly close analogies with this Nativity and shows that the remnant of the green initial stave on the right is, in fact, an open-mouthed profile face. Seven small historiated initials in Dijon (Musée des Beaux Arts, Inv. 2198) may be from the same manuscript: Yolante Zaluska, Manuscrits enluminés de Dijon, 1991, pp.309-10, pl.CXL.
[Lombardy, 1480-1500]
52 x 43mm (overall). The Virgin kneels beside the infant Christ with Joseph behind her and, to the right, three small angels singing from a hymnbook, behind them are the ruins of a classical building, traces of green initial staves at the edges; on the reverse lines of text in a gothic bookhand (cracking to surface of impasted green pigment of Virgin's mantle-lining and small pigment loss from Joseph's forehead, spot on Virgin's cheek, remains of laid down paper on the reverse).
This exquisite and delicately painted scene was the infill of an historiated initial. It is likely to have opened a Mass or Office for Christmas in a Missal or Breviary: it may have been either the Introit 'Puer natus est' or the first lection 'Primo tempore'.
This is a fine example of the style of the illuminator known as the Master of Crescenzago from his work in a series of six choirbooks copied between 1487 and 1491 for the church of the Lateran canons of Santa Maria Rossa in Crescenzago (Milan, Archivio di Sant'Ambrogio, Mss M.45-50): Pier Luigi Mulas in Dizionario biografico dei miniatori italiani, ed. Milvia Bollati, 2004, pp.679-80. His style is a sophisticated and classicising development of Milanese illumination of the third quarter of the fifteenth century.
One of the other manuscripts containing this Master's work is the Diurnale for the Certosa of Pavia now in The Hague (Koninklijke Bibliotheek, Ms 135 J 8), which presents particularly close analogies with this Nativity and shows that the remnant of the green initial stave on the right is, in fact, an open-mouthed profile face. Seven small historiated initials in Dijon (Musée des Beaux Arts, Inv. 2198) may be from the same manuscript: Yolante Zaluska, Manuscrits enluminés de Dijon, 1991, pp.309-10, pl.CXL.
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