Beschreibung:

ANNUNCIATION -- LARGE HISTORIATED INITIAL 'M' CUT FROM AN ILLUMINATED MANUSCRIPT CHOIR BOOK ON VELLUM [Umbria, possibly Perugia, ca.1320] 145 x 120 mm. overall. The angel Gabriel carrying a golden staff emerges from the left half of the initial and addresses the Virgin who stands at the right hand side, the initial and infill ground are pink with white penwork decoration against an overall ground of blue with white flourishing within a frame of liquid gold with burnished gold cornerpieces, the initial has acanthus terminals of red, yellow and blue that curl into the margin, text below the initial and on the verso is written in a gothic bookhand in black ink between music of square notation on a 4-line red stave (some cracking to gold), window mounted on card. It is likely that this initial opened the Antiphon 'Missus est gabriel angelus ad mariam virginem' for the Office of the Feast of the Annunciation in an antiphonal. The colour range, emphatic modelling and attenuated foliage of this handsome initial are all characteristic of Umbrian manuscript illumination of the first third of the fourteenth century. A particularly close comparison can be made with the miniature of Sta Susanna that heads the list of Perugian notaries of 1318 (Milan, Biblioteca Braidense, AC XIV, MS 43, f.35): Francesco d'Assisi , catalogue of the exhibition Perugia, Palazzo Comunale, 1982, p. 56 no. 28.