Four initials on three leaves from a set of Choirbooks, in Latin, decorated manuscripts on vellum [Italy (probably Arezzo), c.1275-1300]

3 leaves, each approximately 400/410mm. by 300mm., with four initials (ie. one leaf with 2 initials), each one to two staves high, in orange, blue or light pink with white tracery work on blue or light pink grounds filled with wide acanthus leaves in light pink, orange and olive green, text and music on seven 4-line red staves, rastrum 28mm., small initials in red or blue with contrasting pen-flourishing, eighteenth-century scribble in faint brown ink in outer margin, early twentieth-century pencil prices in upper inner margin, vellum stained, chapter numbers in margins slightly cropped, the smaller decorated initials rubbed in places, else in good condition

The soft colourful palette, the delicate tracery work and the beautifully arranged foliage with sharp pointed leaves that peek into the margins are characteristic of late thirteenth-century central Italian manuscript illumination. The style may be associated with an Aretine workshop responsible for illuminating a series of Choirbooks in the Archivio Capitolare of the Cathedral of Arezzo and in the Accademia Etrusca of Cortona (see R. Passalacqua, I codici liturgici miniati Dugenteschi, 1980, pp.16-17).