The Ascension, cut from an Antiphonal, illuminated manuscript on vellum [Florence, 2nd half 15th century]

A sumptuous depiction of the Ascension of Christ, from a 15th-century Florentine Antiphonal.

c.185 x 205mm. A cutting, the initial 'V' opening the antiphon 'Viri Galilaei' for the Feast of the Ascension, 2 visible lines of text and 3 of music on a 4-line stave, contemporary foliation 'CXXX' in red and blue, modern pencil '53' in upper margin of cutting (a little fading and some craquelure to the burnished gold, some show-through of red staves, else in good condition). Mounted and framed.

Illumination:
The style of illumination is unequivocally Tuscan, dating from the second half of the 15th century. The composition of the letter stave, with the historiation outlined in a different tonality of gold, the pink, green and blue palette, the acanthus clusters at corners, and the gold balls and filigree sprays into the margins is identical to a similarly cropped leaf at the Boston Public Library (MS pb Med.192), depicting an angel at the empty sepulchre, there described as Florence, mid-15th century by Lisa Fagin Davis and perhaps a sister cutting to our manuscript. We see the influence of the great Tuscan Renaissance painter and illuminator Zanobi Strozzi (1412-1468), especially in the elongated figure of Christ and the treatment of the face: see for example his Miraculous Draught of Fishes at the Museo di San Marco dell'Angelico in Florence, MS 515, f.1, or an initial 'B' with David in Prayer at the Metropolitan Museum, Robert Lehman Collection, 1975.1.2470.