Anonymous Venetian artist
Large Romanesque initial ‘A’
Large Romanesque illuminated initial ‘A’ on a leaf from an illuminated Antiphonal on vellum [Veneto, c.1250-60].

An exceptional example of early Venetian manuscript illumination from the famed collection of Jean-François-Auguste, comte de Bastard d’Estang.

430 x 305mm. 11 lines of text and music, the initial ‘A’ introduces the first response of the first nocturn for Candlemas (February 2): ‘Adorna thalamum Syon […]’.

Provenance: 1) The parent manuscript would have been a sumptuous item likely produced in the region of the Adriatic stretching from Friuli and Istria to Croatia. 2) Jean-François-Auguste, comte de Bastard d'Estang (1792-1883), military man, art historian, medievalist and bibliophile. He owned this and several other sister leaves. 3) Baron Horace de Landau (1824-1903) and his niece Madame Finaly, of Florence, sold at: 4) Fischer, Lucerne, 21 and 22 November 1977, lot 787. 5) Koller, Zurich, Italienische Buchmalerei aus einer bedeutenden Privatsammlung, 18 September 2015, lot 150.

A number of sister leaves have appeared on the market in the last 30 years: Jörn Günther, Catalog 6, 2002, nos 7, 8; Les Enluminures, cat. 1994, no 2; Christie’s, London, 29 June, 1994, lot 1. Two other leaves are in the collection of the Fondazione Giorgio Cini in Venice (Inv. 2008, 2007).

The style of the initial is remarkable, the archaising geometric strapwork illumination drawing heavily on Romanesque decoration, while the monkeys, lions, dragons and tendrils are features found in the Byzantine decorative tradition. Comparables can be drawn with the decorative programme of the group of antiphonals in the convent of St Francis at Zadar, Croatia (in particular Antiphonal F – see L. Mirkovic, Minijature u antifonarima I gradualima Manastira sv. Franje Asiskog u Zadru, Belgrade, 1977 and F. Toniolo, The first five centuries of Croatian art, Zagreb, 2006, pp.266-73). Gaudenz Freuler draws further parallels with the illuminations of the Epistolary of Giovanni di Gaibana (Padua, Biblioteca Capitolare MS. E 2). From the surviving sister leaves it seems that there were two hands at work in the illumination of the manuscript, a more refined one for the ornamental initials and a more archaising one responsible for the figures.

Bibliography: Friedrich G. Zeileis, Più ridon le carte (3rd ed.), Rauris 2014, pp.12-15.

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