Beschreibung:

GOD BLESSING AND DAVID PLAYING THE PSALTERY, in an initial B on a leaf from a choir Psalter, ILLUMINATED MANUSCRIPT ON VELLUM [Florence, 1380s] 514 x 382mm (leaf), 128 x 138mm (initial). The initial, with staves of blue supporting curling acanthus leaves of orange, pink and green, contains half-length figures of God the Father and King David; both figures and initial are set against grounds of burnished gold. The acanthus continues to borders in two margins made up of leaves of pink, blue, green, orange, grey and yellow with infills and grounds of burnished gold and containing a dragon-head and bird. Two columns of 21 lines written in brown ink in a gothic bookhand between four verticals and 42 horizontals, music of square notation on a four-line stave of red for antiphons and hymns, rubrics in red, one-line initials and psalm incipit alternately letters of red and blue with flourishing of the other colour, similar two-line initial opening the hymn on the recto (some abrasion of surface of gold grounds and slight creasing, tiny surface irregularities, original, in parchment in area of Christ's head). This leaf, with the folio number cxxi on the recto, carries the opening of a choir Psalter for Benedictine use. The rubric begins with the invocation 'In nomine s[an]c[t]e i[n]dividue trinitatis', which may indicate an intended use in a monastic church with this dedication: there were both Vallambrosan and Camaldolese abbeys within the diocese of Florence dedicated to Sta Trinità. The bright palette, luxuriant foliage and various features of initial and borders are characteristic, in fact, signature details of the work of the illuminator Don Simone Camaldolese. The flecked-feather birds pecking text are exactly as those in the borders, for example, of the Dante at New Haven (Yale Univ., Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library, Ms 428); and the lozenges within the cross-nimbing on God's halo are exactly replicated in a Gradual in Chicago (Newberry Library, Ms +74): Painting and Illumination in Renaissance Florence 1300-1450 , L.B. Kanter et al, exh. cat New York, 1994, pp.198-205. Don Simone, who originally came from Siena, was a Camaldolese monk at Sta Maria degli Angeli in Florence -- a monastery renowned for its scriptorium. His near contemporaries there were Don Silvestro dei Gherarducci and Lorenzo Monaco who is thought to have been partly trained as an illuminator by Don Simone. Don Simone's career ran from c.1378 to 1405, with his earliest signed illumination being in an Antiphonal of 1381 made for S. Pancrazio, Florence (Florence, Bib. Medicea-Laurenziana, Cod.Cor. 37-40). The present leaf is a particularly fine example of his work. The careful modelling of flesh tones and precise detailing in the faces and hair of Christ and David suggest that it should be dated to the early 1380s, predating his move towards the simplification of handling and form that became increasingly characteristic of his later style.