Western Manuscripts and Miniatures

An enormous leaf from an Antiphonary depicting St. Augustine of Hippo, one of the most important Fathers of the Church, preaching with a friendly smile.

549 x 385 mm. Single leaf, ruled in brown ink for one column of 41 lines (written space: 230 x 160 mm), double vertical bounding lines ruled full across, with seven lines of text and seven staves of four lines in red (rastrum: 30 mm), square notation, written in a gothic bookhand in brown ink, rubrics in red, three large initials alternately in red and blue with contrasting penwork, ONE LARGE HISTORIATED INITIAL equivalent to two lines of musical notation and text in orange, grey and pink on gold ground, with burnished gold highlights and white tracery, extending to the lower margin into a scroll of acanthus inhabited by two birds, with traces of underdrawings (slight soiling on the lower margin, browning on the sewing edge, tape stains at the sides and upper margin, a few parchment holes carefully repaired by parchment patches, a minor tear on the fore edge,slight cockling of the parchment, else in good condition).

This leaf comes from an unidentified Antiphonary. It contains the opening of the first response for the first nocturne of the Feast of St. Augustine (28 August), reading “Invenit se Augustinus longe esse a Deo…,” and introduced with a large historiated initial “I” shaped as a Gothic tabernacle, including the seated figure of St. Augustine of Hippo (354-430). The prominence of the office and its initial suggest that the book was made for an Augustinian house, either of Augustinian canons (founded in northern Italy and southern France in the eleventh century), or one of the later congregations of Augustinian friars, founded in 1256.

The initial is set in the lower corner of the page upon leafy marginal extensions, with two birds pecking at a winding tendril. The tabernacle is rendered in a soft grey that subtly contrasts with the two flanking orange-red pilasters and the background in burnished gold. The saint is depicted seated, his hands across his chest, perhaps to suggest his action as a preacher. Clad in a blue tunic, his features are well modelled in greenish flesh tones and strong contours.

Although Gaudenz Freuler could not identify other illuminations by the same hand, it is likely that this illuminator knew of artists from the generation active in Bologna and Emilia-Romagna during the final quarter of the thirteenth century, such as the illuminator of a Bible in Los Angeles (Getty Museum, MS Ludwig III, f. 222v). He was probably not active in Bologna itself but in the neighboring regions, where he interpreted the achievements of the more metropolitan art in Bologna in vogue at the beginning of the fourteenth century.
 
Provenance
(1) Sotheby’s, London, 1 December 1998, lot 41, acquired by:

(2) Robert McCarthy, London, MS BM 1214.
 
LITERATURE
The present leaf has been described and published in: Sotheby's, 1 December 1998, lot 41; Gaudenz Freuler and Georgi Parpulov, The McCarthy Collection, Vol. I, Italian and Byzantine Miniatures, London, 2018, no. 27, pp. 86-87 (with further literature).

We are grateful to Gaudenz Freuler for permission to quote from his catalogue for this entry. Freeman’s | Hindman thank Senior Consultant Sandra Hindman and Elliott Adam for their assistance in preparing this sale.