David and Nathan, miniature from an illuminated Book of Hours, on vellum [Italy (Florence), c.1480]

single leaf, 125mm. by 92mm., with a miniature with David and Nathan by Francesco Rosselli (for the beginning of the Penitential Psalms), surrounded by a full border with floral scroll design on a burnished gold ground enclosing a medallion of David in Prayer, recto blank, miniature slightly rubbed with small pigment losses, some retouching in places (most probably that of Caleb Wing in the nineteenth century: see below), the original leaf of very thin vellum pasted onto a leaf of stouter vellum, thin frame in brown and gold added around the border, framed

(1) From a Book of Hours perhaps made for Lorenzo de’ Medici (1449-92): a miniature from the same manuscript (illustrated in our catalogue, 11 July 1966, lot 199, and now in a private collection) includes the Medici arms overpainted in silver.

(2) Perhaps in the collection of John Boykett Jarman (d.1864), the goldsmith and jeweller, whose library was damaged by a flood in 1846 (note the slight water damage evident on the present leaf). To restore the miniatures he employed the illuminator Caleb Wing (see J.M. Backhouse in The British Museum Quarterly, XXXII, 1968, pp.76-92). A copy of the present miniature is to be found in one of Jarman’s other manuscripts: a Book of Hours embellished with nineteenth-century facsimiles of miniatures, last sold in our rooms, 6 July 2000, lot 35, reappearing as Tenschert, Unterwegs zur Renaissance, 2011, no.24. The present miniature was sold together with six other sister leaves in our rooms, 11 July 1966, lots 199-205 (as lot 202, illustrated).

illumination

This miniature is the work of the Florentine artist Francesco Rosselli (1448-before 1513), who is recorded as an illuminator and engraver of maps and prints. In 1470 he was paid for a Gradual for Siena Cathedral (Siena, Bibl. Picc., MS.25.10). Stylistically, these are close to the work of Francesco di Antonio del Chierico, one of the most prolific manuscript painters of his time, who may have been Francesco’s master.