Lot 14

Saint Holding a Casket, historiated initial from an illuminated antiphoner, manuscript on vellum [northern Italy (perhaps Cremona), c.1460-80]

Estimate

7,000 - 10,000 GBP

bidding is closed

Description

Vellum

a cutting, 106mm. by 87mm., with large initial 'I' (perhaps opening the Common of One Martyr outside Paschaltide, 'Iste sanctus ...'), in pink with white penwork with a standing figure dressed as a young Renaissance aristocrat with red robes with white fur trim, holding a small casket probably containing medicine, before a detailed orchard of fruit trees and a deep blue night sky, all within burnished gold grounds, 3 lines of text on verso and nineteenth-century pencil note 'from the Cathedral of Como', some slight flaking from miniature and rubbing to gold, else fine condition

Provenance

Provenance: (1) William Young Ottley (1771-1836); his sale in our rooms, 11 May 1838; (2) John Rushout, second Baron Northwick (1770-1859), who bought all his cuttings at the Ottley sale; by descent to his nephew's widow's grandson by her first marriage, Edward George Spencer-Churchill (1876-1964), who consigned it to the Northwick Park sale in these rooms, 16 November 1925, lot 118; (3) Robert Lehman (1891-1969, banker, head of the Lehman Brothers); de Ricci, II, p.1715 as C.24, and Palladino, Treasures of a Lost Art, 2003, p.129, no.62c, with colour plate. The companion miniature from the same series, Palladino no.62b, is now J. Paul Getty Museum, MS.91.

Catalogue Note

This initial is probably from the same set of choirbooks as Bologna, Museo Civico, Coll. Pall. No.673, signed by the artist, "El mio filio Frate Nebridio si me a depinto ad honorem dei, &c", identified by Mirella Levi d'Ancona as Frate Nebridio of Cremona (Arte Lombarda 8, 1963; cf. Palladino, pp.129-31). He is sometimes also known as the Master of the Mainardi Missal, after his work in Cremona, Biblioteca Statale, MS Civ.188. The presence of Augustinian nuns in another cutting from the same manuscript (Palladino no. 62d) suggests that the parent volume was made for a convent in Cremona with this affiliation, perhaps the Augustinians of Santa Maria founded in Cremona before 1123. A later inscription, found also on the reverse of cuttings from the Lomax-Wade album (Dyson Perrins sale, 1960, lot 151), states "from the Cathedral of Como".

The miniature shows a young male saint in profile, standing by a forest, holding a jewelled box. It may be Saint Cosmas or Saint Damian, the twin patron saints of medical practitioners and the Medici family (feast day, 27 September). The box may be a pill case.