Anonymous northern Italian artist
CROSS WITH INSTRUMENTS OF THE PASSION, initial ‘O’ from a choirbook [?Cremona, last quarter 15th century]
A handsome historiated initial, whose illuminator seems to have taken inspiration from a grand series of choirbooks from the Lombard city of Cremona. The corali were worked on by a number of different hands between c. 1480-c. 1490, including Frate Nebridio (fl. 1467-c. 1486) and Baldassare Coldiradi (active third quarter 15th century): while the present initial is not in the hand of either master, its illuminator seems to follow Coldiradi’s tendency to cover the blue ground of his initials with radiant flecks of light, achieved here using a white pigment. The body of the initial, rendered in purple-pink and clad with blue and green acanthus, also bears resemblance to those from the Cremona choirbooks.

Anna Melograni first grouped together a collection of excised initials as stylistically attributable to Cremona in the second half of the 15th century ('Miniature Inedite del Quattrocento Lombardo nelle Collezioni Americane', Storia dell’Arte, no 82, 1994, pp. 283-302): the group seem to have been cut from a single antiphonal volume that formed part of an impressive series of choirbooks, perhaps made for an Augustinian convent (see Pia Palladino, Treasures of a Lost Art; Italian Manuscript Painting of the Middle Ages and Renaissance, 2003, pp. 131-132, cat. no 63 for further discussion).

Provenance:
•Private collection, London.

130 x 132mm. The initial ‘O’ could have opened the hymn ‘O crux ave, spes unica’. Mounted.

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