Three historiated and two illuminated initials from a copy of St Augustine’s Tractates on the Gospel of John, in Latin [Alsace (perhaps Strasbourg), c.1460-70]

five cuttings, from 80x100mm to 135x95mm, vellum, from a volume written in two columns each 80mm wide, each 20 lines occupying c.115mm in height, each cutting with an initial in burnished gold: (a) initial ‘M’, Tractate 8, with THE MIRACLE AT CANA (John 2:1-9); (b) initial ‘M’, Tractate 24, with THE FEEDING OF THE FIVE THOUSAND (John 6:5-8); (c) gilt foliate initial ‘I’, Tractate 28; (d) initial ‘M’, Tractate 33, with THE WOMAN TAKEN IN ADULTERY (John 8:3-8); (e) gilt and painted initial ‘T’ enclosing a blank space, Tractate 112, all apparently salvaged from a manuscript with water-damage and creases, the pigments of one historiated initial rather washed-out

These very fine initials can perhaps be attributed to in Strasbourg in the 1460s. Although printed in Mainz in 1455, copies of the Gutenberg Bible received illumination and binding in other parts of Germany, Austria, Central Europe, Scandinavia, the Low Countries, and Spain. The Hopetoun-Young copy (Cambridge, University Library; digital facsimile online) was used as setting copy in a Strasbourg printing shop of the late 1460s (see P. Needham, ‘A Gutenberg Bible Used as Printer’s Copy by Heinrich Eggenstein, ca. 1469’, Transactions of the Cambridge Bibliographical Society, 9, 1986, 36-75), and its very fine illuminated initials match closely the style of the present cuttings. Characteristic are the French designs of the letters with scrolling acanthus leaves and finely dotted lines defining the body of the leaves. In the Middle Ages, Strasbourg was under the control of the Holy Roman Empire and the style of the expressive figures is decidedly German.

Most remarkable is the narrative of the historiated initials, notably the Feeding of the Five Thousand: while Jesus and two of the Apostles divide ‘five loaves of bread and two fish’ on the right, the followers are grouped around a small well on the left shown eating and drinking, including a woman holding a baby, two small children sitting on the grass, and a dog drinking from the stream.