Singing and Music-Making Angels, historiated initial from a Choirbook [southern Netherlands (perhaps Ghent or Bruges), c.1500s]

cutting, c.120x135mm, vellum, historiated initial 'B', reverse with part of three lines of text and music on four-line red staves, rastrum c.21mm, small pigment losses, laid down on paper, framed

The elaborate composition of this miniature is indebted to Hans Memling's panels showing Christ between Singing and Music-Making Angels that were part of a gigantic altarpiece for the high altar of the monastery church of Santa Maria la Real, Nájera, Spain (Antwerp, Royal Museum of Fine Arts). Especially the angels playing harp and fiddle here follow closely Memling's example while the angel seen from behind playing lute differs from Memling's version depicted from the front. The denticulated ground onto which the initial is painted relates to the group of polyphonic music manuscripts copied by the music scribe and composer Petrus Alamire; he was attached to the Brussels and Mechelen courts of Philip the Fair, Margaret of Austria, Archduke Charles (later Emperor Charles V), and Mary of Hungary, and the Burgundian-Habsburg music manuscripts were embellished by Flemish illuminators from the prominent Ghent-Bruges school (see H. Kellman, ed., The Treasury of Petrus Alamire, 1999).