Beschreibung:

ASCENSION OF CHRIST, historiated initial P on a leaf from an Antiphonal, in Latin, ILLUMINATED MANUSCRIPT ON VELLUM
ASCENSION OF CHRIST, historiated initial P on a leaf from an Antiphonal, in Latin, ILLUMINATED MANUSCRIPT ON VELLUM [Arezzo, c.1280-1300] 505 x 325mm. The initial containing the half-length figure of Christ clad in rich robes of blue and green, his right hand raised in blessing, framed by a mandorla and borne by two angels, below him five apostles, their heads and left hands raised to the skies in adoration; eight lines written in black ink in a gothic bookhand below eight lines of music of square notation on a four-line stave of red, rubrics in red, a single one-line flourished initial on the recto and three on the verso (some marginal browning and staining, ink on recto slightly faded). This leaf came from the Temporal section of an Antiphonal where the initial opened the Responsory 'Post passionem suam per dies quadraginta' from matins for the feast of the Ascension. The rich, colourful palette and the style of composition, with the foliage extensions and the delicate, mournful expressions of the figures, are characteristic of contemporary central Italian manuscript illumination. It can be associated with four other leaves, identical in style, decoration and measurement, which Carl Nordenfalk and subsequently Roberta Passalacqua ascribed to central Italy, possibly Arezzo, during the late thirteenth century. It is likely that all of these were taken from the same Antiphonal or series of Antiphonals: an initial V with the Assumption previously in the Lehman collection (Pia Palladino, Treasures of a Lost Art , 2003, no 1); an initial A with the Three Marys at the Tomb in the National Gallery of Art, Washington (B-18, 760); an initial H with the Nativity in the Cini Collection, Venice (Coll. Hoepli min.x, Cod A, Antiphonarium); and an initial I with a monk holding an aspergillum in the Free Library, Philadelphia (Lewis EM 68:1).