CHOIRBOOK.
Large historiated initial ‘I’.
Italy (Umbria), c. 1300.
Large historiated initial (110 x 75 mm) cut from a choirbook in Latin (perhaps from the Common of Martyrs in an antiphonal), depicting a male martyr saint holding a book and a palm leaf and standing within an architectural surround and against a burnished gold ground, leafy extensions emerging from each side, the whole painted in shades of blue, pink, brown, orange, red and grey, verso with part of two lines of text and music in square notation on four-line red staves (stave height c. 34 mm); trimmed to edges, some very minor creasing and rubbing (ink outline of saint’s halo rubbed away), but in excellent condition.
A very elegant initial in a style characteristic of Umbrian illumination of the late thirteenth and early fourteenth centuries. It can be compared to the oeuvres of the First Master of the Gubbio Choir Books and the Master of the Deruta-Salerno Missals, the latter named after two Missals made for the cathedrals of Deruta and Salerno.
