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Details
ARCHER GROTESQUE, on one of two borders cut from a choirbook, ILLUMINATED MANUSCRIPT ON VELLUM
[Pisa, mid-14th century]
222 x 143mm overall. A human-headed and lion-bodied figure wearing a high pointed helmet, a flying cloak tied over one shoulder and a horn strapped over the other, raises his bow and aims up behind him, he stands on his tail which curls around a leg securing him to a foliate border terminal, all painted in shades of pink, beige, grey, pale blue, green and orange, with burnished gold disks and infills, 2 four-line staves of music of square notation and 3 lines of text (some creasing and loss of ink, tear in lower margin not affecting figure). Mounted. Sold with:
(204 x 154mm) another corner-piece from the same manuscript, with a border made up of curling acanthus, bars, balls and scrolling volutes of the same colours, with 2 staves and 2 lines of text (loss of ink and repaired at upper edge and lower right corner). Mounted.
Such crisp controlled foliage and amusing, active grotesques were features of border decoration in Pisan liturgical books of the 14th century as, for example, the Bible of the Biblioteca del Seminario di S. Caterina: G. Dalli Regoli, Miniatura Pisana del Trecento, 1963, pp.71-75. The present marksman is a particularly polished and inventive creation. (2)
[Pisa, mid-14th century]
222 x 143mm overall. A human-headed and lion-bodied figure wearing a high pointed helmet, a flying cloak tied over one shoulder and a horn strapped over the other, raises his bow and aims up behind him, he stands on his tail which curls around a leg securing him to a foliate border terminal, all painted in shades of pink, beige, grey, pale blue, green and orange, with burnished gold disks and infills, 2 four-line staves of music of square notation and 3 lines of text (some creasing and loss of ink, tear in lower margin not affecting figure). Mounted. Sold with:
(204 x 154mm) another corner-piece from the same manuscript, with a border made up of curling acanthus, bars, balls and scrolling volutes of the same colours, with 2 staves and 2 lines of text (loss of ink and repaired at upper edge and lower right corner). Mounted.
Such crisp controlled foliage and amusing, active grotesques were features of border decoration in Pisan liturgical books of the 14th century as, for example, the Bible of the Biblioteca del Seminario di S. Caterina: G. Dalli Regoli, Miniatura Pisana del Trecento, 1963, pp.71-75. The present marksman is a particularly polished and inventive creation. (2)