Large initial enclosing the bust of a bishop (perhaps a saint-bishop)

Large initial enclosing the bust of a bishop (perhaps a saint-bishop), on a cutting from an early Choirbook, in Latin, illuminated manuscript on vellum, [southern France (perhaps Toulouse) or northern Italy (perhaps Piedmont), fourteenth century], rectangular cutting, trimmed to edges of initial, with large initial ‘D’ in blue with white brushwork overlaid, enclosing a penwork portrait of a bishop’s head (without a halo, but perhaps meant to be a saint-bishop) with green robes and mitre and a ruddy spot added to his right cheek, all on burgundy wash grounds with large gold bezants with designs picked out on their bodies in hairline white brushwork, further white hairline brushwork terminating in leaves and flowerheads overlaid on the grounds outside the body of the initial, sprays of green, orange and yellow acanthus leaves emerging into the inner margins, traces of letters and edge of a stave on the front, remains of two lines of text in a good liturgical hand with music in square notation on a 4-line red stave on reverse, some flaking from paint in places, scuffing and small spots, overall fair and presentable condition, 135 x 135mm.; mounted within modern paper and on card *** The artist of this initial was well versed in the traditions of late medieval Italy (note the acanthus leaf decoration) as well as that of contemporary France (note the figure of the bishop), and must have worked somewhere in the border-regions of those two nations. Alison Stones records the same blending of traditions for two manuscripts produced in Toulouse most probably in opening decades of the fourteenth century (Toulouse, Bibliothèque municipale, MSS. 77 and 79, and Archives Départmentales de la Haute-Garonne, Malte liasse 50 Montsaunès [Res. 15]: Gothic Manuscripts, 1260-1340, 2013-14, her VII-38 and VII-40), with the first of those also using pale colour washes as grounds within initials, and very similar trends have been noted in Piedmontese illumination (see A. Quazza and S. Castronovo, ‘Miniatura trecentesca in Piedmonte: produzione locale e cicolazione di manoscritti’, in Pittura e miniatura del Trecento in Piemonte, 1997, pp. 320-357).

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