Anonymous Bolognese artist
A BISHOP, initial on a leaf from a commentary on Gratian’s Decretum [Bologna, c. 1280]
The leaf is a fine example of Bolognese illumination from the period when Bologna with its famous law school set the standards for legal texts. These were in demand all over Europe, where other centres then followed their systems for clarifying complicated content through a hierarchy of decoration: here from the historiated initial for the causa (legal issue) to the initials and then paragraph marks in red or blue marking its subdivisions. The clarity of this leaf’s layout is exceptional: usually commentaries were added as an explanatory gloss around Gratian’s complete text. Appropriately, the gothic script is typical of glosses and the causa is illustrated with an historiated initial rather than the small miniature usual in illustrated copies of the Decretum itself.

The historiated initial is given added emphasis by its attractive extension between the two columns of text to form a border that opens into leaf forms in the upper and lower margins. The leaf was dated to c. 1280 or possibly a little earlier by Alessandro Conti (letter of 19 March 1984, copy on mount), author of La miniatura Bolognese, scuole e botteghe 1270-1340, 1981. The border and the slightly small-headed figure with emphatic black detailing are reminiscent of some of the work in the great set of law books of c. 1280 that came to be owned by Durham Cathedral (see S. L’Engle and R. Gibbs, Illuminating the Law, Medieval Legal Manuscripts in Cambridge Collections, 2001, nos 11-13).

Provenance:
•Private collection, London.

420 x 265 mm. Ruled space: 305 x 180 mm., pricking remains for bottom of ruled verticals. A bishop, clad in his ecclesiastical vestments within a letter Q, opens ‘Quidam episcopus’ (a certain bishop), the incipit to Causa VIII of Gratian’s fundamental collection of canon (church) law dealing with a bishop illegally appointing his successor. On recto eight-line historiated initial with border extension and gathering mark in red of d iiii in lower margin. Mounted.

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