MONKEY, SQUIRREL AND BUTTERFLY, in a full-page border, and LANDSCAPE WITH SKULLS AND BONE, in an historiated initial, leaf from a Book of Hours, ILLUMINATED MANUSCRIPT ON VELLUM [Ferrara, c.1460] 157 x 125mm. Full-page border with scrolling tendrils with golden disks and fantastic flowerheads and three roundels each with an animal or insect on a grassy ground with scattered pebbles and against a blue sky, the initial with staves of pink foliage curling back to reveal green, a ground of burnished gold, and the infill containing a landscape of hills with distant hilltop towns and a foreground cavern revealing two skulls and a long bone, 14 lines of text, justification: 76 x 62mm, two one-line flourished initials and rubrics of red; on the recto 5 lines written in brown ink, rubrics of red (all verso text in brown lost or erased, tiny losses of pigment from the roundels with animals, slightly larger losses from the initial stave and terminal, the monkey's back and the squirrel's hind-quarters, left edge of verso reinforced and paper strips to secure in mount). Framed. This leaf, once the opening of the Office of the Dead in a Book of Hours, demonstrates the refinement and appeal of illumination produced at the d'Este court in Ferrara in the middle decades of the fifteenth century. The meticulous handling, bright yet delicate palette and engaging treatment show the page to be the work of Giorgio d'Alemagna, documented in Ferrara from 1441 to 1462. Although he was predominantly engaged in working on manuscripts for the d'Este rulers themselves -- including the Breviary for Leonello, and the Missal and Bible for Borso -- he also undertook the decoration of manuscripts for other prominent citizens. It is with his work in one of these, the Virgil made for Leonardo Sanudo in 1458-59 (Paris, BnF, lat.7939A) that precise comparisons to the decoration of the present leaf can be made: G. Mariani Canova in La miniatura a Ferrara dal tempo de Cosmè Tura all'eredità de Ercole de' Roberti , ed. F. Toniolo, 1998, pp.137-141.
MONKEY, SQUIRREL AND BUTTERFLY, in a full-page border, and LANDSCAPE WITH SKULLS AND BONE, in an historiated initial, leaf from a Book of Hours, ILLUMINATED MANUSCRIPT ON VELLUM [Ferrara, c.1460] 157 x 125mm. Full-page border with scrolling tendrils with golden disks and fantastic flowerheads and three roundels each with an animal or insect on a grassy ground with scattered pebbles and against a blue sky, the initial with staves of pink foliage curling back to reveal green, a ground of burnished gold, and the infill containing a landscape of hills with distant hilltop towns and a foreground cavern revealing two skulls and a long bone, 14 lines of text, justification: 76 x 62mm, two one-line flourished initials and rubrics of red; on the recto 5 lines written in brown ink, rubrics of red (all verso text in brown lost or erased, tiny losses of pigment from the roundels with animals, slightly larger losses from the initial stave and terminal, the monkey's back and the squirrel's hind-quarters, left edge of verso reinforced and paper strips to secure in mount). Framed. This leaf, once the opening of the Office of the Dead in a Book of Hours, demonstrates the refinement and appeal of illumination produced at the d'Este court in Ferrara in the middle decades of the fifteenth century. The meticulous handling, bright yet delicate palette and engaging treatment show the page to be the work of Giorgio d'Alemagna, documented in Ferrara from 1441 to 1462. Although he was predominantly engaged in working on manuscripts for the d'Este rulers themselves -- including the Breviary for Leonello, and the Missal and Bible for Borso -- he also undertook the decoration of manuscripts for other prominent citizens. It is with his work in one of these, the Virgil made for Leonardo Sanudo in 1458-59 (Paris, BnF, lat.7939A) that precise comparisons to the decoration of the present leaf can be made: G. Mariani Canova in La miniatura a Ferrara dal tempo de Cosmè Tura all'eredità de Ercole de' Roberti , ed. F. Toniolo, 1998, pp.137-141.
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.jpg "Source: Christie's")
.jpg "Source: Christie's")
