Beschreibung:

Cutting from the base of a leaf of an illuminated choirbook, in Latin on parchment [northern Italy (probably Florence), second half of fourteenth century] Cutting from the base of a choirbook leaf, with 3 lines of text with music on a 4-line red stave (rastrum: 28mm.), 3 small initials in blue or red with contrasting penwork, border on three sides of acanthus leaves heightened with white penwork and curling around a coloured bar, enclosing gold fruit, the inner corner of the decoration with a swirl of green leaves enclosing a detailed human face with fleshtones in grey-blue, the acanthus leaf spray sprouting from the man’s mouth, the foliage terminating in the right-hand margin in a dragon with a blue body, its head lifted up to bite at a large gold teardrop, slight losses to paint (notably from green leaves) and trimmed at edges with losses of a few mm. from outer edge with damage to foliage and dragon’s tail, remnants of paper from last mounting, overall good and presentable condition, 200 by 355mm. This border piece was once part of an excellent and early Florentine Choirbook. The use of thin bars supporting curls of acanthus leaves and chubby stylised flowerheads finds close parallels in Florentine work of the second half of the fourteenth century, and the notably fine human face in the border finds parallels in the work of the Master of the Dominican Effigies (compare the blue faces in a leaf from another choir book reproduced in Painting and Illumination in Early Renaissance Florence, 1994, item 4d) as well as in the figures who appear out of curls of foliage in the work of Maestro Daddesco (compare the choirbook leaf reproduced in P. Palladino, Treasures of a Lost Art, 2003, no. 24).