[ENLUMINURE] - Lot 6

[ENLUMINURE] Initial I from a choir book. Standing Christ and kneeling man in prayer. Italy, Emilia-Romagna, Bologna, late 13th or early 14th century. Attributable to a Bolognese master (Master of Sant'Agnese?) under the influence of the Master of the Girona Bible (active in Bologna in the years 1260-1290). Historiated initial taken from an antiphonary or gradual painted in Emilia-Romagna (Bologna) on stylistic bases; square notation on 4-line staves in red; colored acanthus leaves, grotesque motif (dragon) in red and gray, besant in burnished gold. Some chipping in burnished gold, two small wormholes in the parchment without affecting the illuminated initial, otherwise good overall condition. Dimensions (irregular fragment), at widest: 210x105mm This initial (and that of the following lot) can be compared with works associated with the "second style" of Bolognese illumination of the second half of the 13th and early 14th centuries, under the influence of artists such as the Master of the Girona Bible (named after a sumptuous Bible in the Girona Chapter Library (MS.10), or Jacopino da Reggio (fl. 1265- c. 1300). The palette characteristic of Bologna at the end of the Duecento, with deep blue in the background with fine white highlights, red, green, pale pink and grey, is found in our initial. Influenced by Byzantine models, the miniatures painted by this illuminator are particularly reminiscent of the Master of Sant'Agnese (for example, in the Graduale Ms. 521, Convento di Sant'Agnese. Bologna, Museo Civico Medievale) or the Master of the Girona Bible (e.g. Gradual Ms. 526, San Francesco Bologna, Museo Civico Medievale). The Master of Sant'Agnese was named by Fabrizio Lollini on the basis of commissions carried out around 1300 by the artist and illuminators at his workshop for the Dominican Sisters of Sant'Agnese, including choir books preserved in the Museo Civico Medievale (cod. 519, 520 and 521). Recent work, including that of Roncroffi (2009), has helped to reconstruct these choir books, made for the Dominican Sisters of Bologna in the late 13th and early 14th centuries. Some aspects of the present initial are reminiscent of the leaves listed by P. Kidd (2019), no. 28, taken from a Gradual from Sant'Agnese di Val di Pietra (Bologna), or the leaves described by G. Freuler, from Sant'Agnese and Santa Maria Maddalena di Val di Pietra (Bologna). See: Kennedy, T. "The Art of the Friars in the University City", in Medieval Bologna: Art for a University City, Nashville, 2021, pp. 57-64. - Kidd, P. The McCarthy Collection: Italian and Byzantine Miniatures, London, 2019, no. 28, pp. 88-90: parent volume, Bologna, Museo e Biblioteca della Musica, MS Lit. 4. - Freuler, G.Italian Miniatures from the Twelfth to the Sixteenth Centuries, Milan 2013, no. 15, pp. 190-205: "Four fragments from a choirbook from the Dominican Nunnery of Sant'Agnese in Bologna, and a leaf from a choirbook series from the Dominican nunnery of Santa Maria Maddalena di Val di Pietra in Bologna." - Roncroffi, S. Psallite sapienter. Codice musicali delle Dominicane Bolognesi, Florence, 2009.