Beschreibung:

John the Baptist holding an agnus dei, in a large initial, on a leaf from an illuminated Antiphoner, in Latin, manuscript on parchment [northern Italy (probably Bologna), late thirteenth or early fourteenth century] 25 leaves, all from the same parent codex, in remains of gatherings, foliated in modern pencil (and followed here), fol. 11v with a large initial ‘I’ (opening “Immolabit hedum multitude …”) formed of a doleful bearded saint in blue robes, holding a lamb and gazing at the adjacent text, before a warm pink ground heightened with white penwork, and beneath a blue architectural portico, coloured acanthus leaves and large bezants sprouting from foot and head of initial into margin, a second slightly smaller initial ‘C’ on fol. 1r containing the Crucifixion in the same style, three other coloured initials enclosing tight-knit sprays of similar foliage with gold bezants or droplets, rubrics in red, 7 lines of a gothic bookhand, with music on a 4-line red stave (rastrum: 23 mm.), some small spots and areas of wear, very slight scuffing to gold, wear along rastrum lines and small hole (perhaps from original flaw in parchment) in background of smaller historiated initial, small hole in acanthus leaf tip on fol. 11v, some early repairs to margins, else good and presentable condition, 422 by 300 mm., in fitted cloth covered case The image of John the Baptist with his dark and doleful expression, heavy brow ridge and cheeks heightened with blocks of white is notably close to the work of the Maestro della Bibbia di Gerona (cf. the Gradual, now Madrid, Bib. Nac. Vit 21-8, illustrated in Duecento: Forme e colori del Medioevo a Bologna, 2000, p. 126), whose Bolognese atelier functioned in the last decades of the thirteenth and opening decades of the fourteenth century.