St Laurence and St Bernard or St Benedict, two historiated initials from an Antiphoner or Noted Breviary, in Latin [Italy (Florence or Siena), c.1500]

two cuttings, 86x83mm and 90x95mm, vellum, (a) initial ‘O’ with St Laurence dressed as a deacon, holding a book, palm-leaf and grid-iron, the reverse with music on a red stave and the word ‘martyris’, and (b) initial ‘H’ with St Bernard or St Benedict, dressed in white, holding a book and abbot’s crozier, the reverse with part of a rubric ‘In d(omi)nicis / dieb(us) ad / v(espe)ras an(tiphona)’, the surprisingly short lines suggesting that the manuscript layout was in two columns; minor rubbing of pigments and gold

The two initials are painted in the style of the little-known Florentine illuminator LITTIFREDI CORBIZI who worked from 1494 to 1515 in Siena. Ada Labriola has referred us to the dismembered Choirbooks of San Benedetto, Gubbio, a series on which Corbizi is documented to have worked between 1499 and 1503. At the beginning of the 16th century, these Choirbooks were transferred to the church of San Pietro, also in Gubbio, where the German painter Johan Anton Ramboux (1790-1866) removed many illuminations c.1835-36; one cutting with the Coronation of Christ, today Berlin, Kupferstichkabinett, no.3342 (see P. Wescher, Miniaturen, 1931, pp.98-99, ill.) is especially close to the present initials.