Second Master of the San Domenico Prayerbooks, Bologna, c.1320

A Saint or prophet in prayer, cut from a choirbook, illuminated manuscript on vellum [Bologna, c.1320]

A charming example of 14th-century Bolognese illumination by the Second Master of the San Domenico Choirbooks.

73 x 73mm. Initial 'U' with a praying Saint or Prophet (some craquelure to the burnished gold, a few losses of pigment to the faces of God and the Saint, the red of the Saint's robe a little smudged).

Provenance:
Maggs Bros, cat. 1385 (2005), no 19, attributed to Nerio and described as 'Moses and the Burning Bush'.

Illumination:
The style of illumination is reminiscent of the work of the Second Master of the San Domenico Choirbooks, recently renamed the B18 Master after his involvement in the illumination of an Institutiones of Justinian, Padua, Bibl. Capit. B 18. He was one of the seven illuminators who worked on the series of manuscripts produced for the Dominican church of San Domenico in Bologna. From the complete series of choirbooks, ten volumes of the antiphonal and eleven volumes of the gradual are still found in the library of San Domenico (V. Alce and A. d'Amato, La Biblioteca di S. Domenico in Bologna, Florence, 1961, pp.141-69 and, more recently, E. D'Agostino and P. Alunni, eds., I corali di San Domenico a Bologna, 2005): they represent the most important example of liturgical illumination from Emilia from the first half of the 14th century, and constitute the prototype for a number of other choirbooks executed for San Domenico and other Bolognese religious houses (G. Mariana Canova, Miniature dell'Italia settentrionale nella Fondazione Giorgio Cini, 1978, nos 6-17). The present miniature, with its Giottesque influence, is closest to the Master's work in two recent additions to the corpus of San Domenico illumination, specifically nos 19.2 and 19.3 in G. Freuler, Italian Miniatures, I, 2013, pp.232-5.