Beschreibung:

The Master of the Montepulciano Gradual (formerly identified as the work of the Master of San Giovanni Fuorcivitas), a virgin saint being crowned at moment of execution, in a large historiated initial, on a leaf from the Sanctorale volume of a set of illuminated manuscript antiphonaries, in Latin on parchment [Central Italy (probably Florence), second quarter of the fourteenth century (probably c. 1325-1335)] Single column, very large historiated initial ‘V’ (opening “Veni sponsa Christi …”, the Magnificat antiphon for Second Vespers from the Common of the Virgins) in cream-white, blue, pale green and red acanthus leaves, enclosing a female saint with a delicately shaded blue-grey face, kneeling with her hands clasped in prayer, and gazing upward as an angel appears and descends towards her holding out a gold crown of martyrdom to place on her head, behind her a soldier with a cudgel and a raised sword as he moves to strike her down, all within a rocky landscape and before a wide blue ground with white penstrokes picking out a diamond shape superimposed with two curling penstrokes bisecting each other to form a cross, the whole initial on burnished gold and within an orange and white penwork frame, foliate extensions of coloured acanthus leaves and gold fruit in margin forming a border decoration on three sides, red rubrics, capitals touched in red, 6 lines of text with music on a 4-line red stave (rastrum: 35 mm.), laid down on card with a decorated German choirbook leaf on the other side, the latter dated ‘1555’ in a cartouche held by a putto in the margin, some small scuffs to gold without affect to figures, trimmed at edges with losses to edges of border decoration, overall in good and clean condition with sparkling fresh and bright pigments, 506 by 365 mm A previously unrecorded leaf from the celebrated antiphonaries formerly identified as the work of Master of San Giovanni Fuorcivitas, but now refined to the oeuvre of the Master of the Montepulciano Gradual; in sparklingly fresh and bright condition Provenance: 1. From a splendid set of antiphonaries produced by an artist of great innovation and accomplishment in Central Italy c. 1325-1335, most probably for a Vallombrosan house, perhaps that of the Church of Santa Trinita, Florence. Earlier attempts to record the known leaves from these dispersed codices, such as that of W.M. Voelkle and R. Wieck (Bernard Breslauer Collection of Manuscript Illuminations, 1992, p. 174), A. Labriola (‘Aggiunte alla miniatura fiorentina del primo Trecento’, Paragone, 547, 1995, and in L’eredità di Giotto. Arte a Firenze, 1340-1375, 2008) and P. Palladino (Treasures of a Lost Art, 2003, no. 26), were recently augmented and superseded by B.C. Keene (‘Anonymity and Choir Book Illumination. The Case of the Master of the Antiphonary of San Giovanni Fuorcivitas’, in Rivista di storia della miniatura 20, 2016, and also the subject of a Getty online blog), in which he identifies 26 leaves and cuttings. 2. The dispersal of the volumes most probably occurred over a century ago, with the earliest reference to any individual leaf most probably that now Yale University Art Gallery, 1954.7.I, which was owned by Robert Lehmann (1891-1969, son of the co-founder of the now collapsed investment banking empire, and acquired by him in Paris in 1953) and was reportedly from the nineteenth-century collection of Enrico Righi of Siena. Two leaves were in the collection of André Hachette (1873-1941, one of the great collectors of the early twentieth century and an early portrait photographer), those sold in his sale, 16 December 1953, lot 43 (reappearing separately as part of the collection of Eric Korner, his sale in Sotheby’s, 20 June 1995, lot 25, and in the same rooms, 18 June 1962, lot 94, and from there to a northern Swedish private collection, their sale, Stockholms Auktionverket, 15 December 2015, lot 6009). 3. This from a private collection in the United States, and by descent to the present owner. Illumi