St Michael the Archangel, in a large historiated initial on a leaf fro

GIOVANNI DI ANTONIO DA BOLOGNA?

St Michael the Archangel, in a large historiated initial on a leaf from a very large Antiphonary, in Latin, illuminated manuscript on vellum [Italy (Bologna or Ferrara?), mid 15th century]

Illuminated with a large initial ‘F’ the height of two lines of text and music with extensions forming foliate borders, depicting the winged archangel Michael holding a staff and a pair of scales, the recto with two one-line initials alternately blue with red penwork or red with mauve penwork, and an 18th(?)-century folio number ‘162’ in red.

Single leaf, c. 535 × 370 mm, ruled for five four-line red staves and square musical notation, and five lines of text written in rounded gothic textura script, with rubrics in red, 1450.

£7,500.00

Text and illumination The initial introduces the text for the feast of St Michael: ‘Factum est silentium in celo dum committeret bellum draco cum Michaele archangelo …’ (There was silence in heaven while the dragon waged war with the archangel Michael …). The main feast-day of St Michael is 29 September; throughout the Middle Ages it was (and in some contexts still is) treated as one of the main divisions of the year into four parts: the oldest universities (Oxford, Cambridge, Dublin, etc.) start their academic year with Michaelmas Term, as does the legal profession in the UK and Ireland.

St Michael is usually depicted in art in one of two guises: either battling a dragon (representing Satan), as described in Revelation 12:7–12; or else, as in the present example, with a pair of scales with which to weigh souls, to decide which would go to heaven and which to hell.

The style is close to that of to Giovanni di Antonio da Bologna, and our initial may be by him; see Massimo Medica in Dizionario biografico dei miniatori italiani: secoli IX–XVI, ed. by Milvia Bollati (Sylvestre Bonnard, 2004), pp. 283–85, with older bibliography. More recent is Maria Ferroni, ‘Primi appunti per i corali quattrocenteschi di San Michele in Bosco a Bologna’, Rivista di storia della miniatura, 18 (2014), pp. 105–17, and Milvia Bollati, ‘Noterella per Giovanni di Antonio da Bologna’, Arte a Bologna: Bollettino dei Musei Civici d’Arte Antica, 9–10, Studi in onore di Massimo Medica*,* ed. by Silvia Battistini and Mark Gregory D’Apuzzo (2024), pp. 330–33.

Condition: some flaking of ink, and some smudging of pigments, notably the red of Michael’s cloak, and some flaking of the gold surrounding the initial.

Stock No.

256552

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St Michael the Archangel, in a large historiated initial on a leaf from a very large Antiphonary, in Latin, illuminated manuscript on vellum [Italy (Bologna or Ferrara?), mid 15th century]

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