Christ, in a large initial [Italy (Naples), circa 1325]

Christ, in a large initial, from a manuscript choir book perhaps decorated by a Picard illuminator working in Naples during the Angevin rule there, on vellum

[Italy (Naples), circa 1325]

Tall and thin cutting from a manuscript leaf, with large initial ‘I’ enclosing Christ as a standing figure, robed in green and burgundy, his head encircled by a halo formed from burnished gold with black details, on a dark blue ground with large gold bezants and scrolling white foliage, the foot of the initial trailing off into coloured acanthus leaves and a gold bezant, the later inscription “IES[U]” added over Christ’s body at thigh height, the reverse with remains of 3 lines of music in square notation on 4-line red staves (rastrum 49mm), with one line of text in a gothic liturgical script, 270mm x 60mm, with a clipping from a sale catalogue titled ‘Illuminated Miniatures, XIIth to XVIth Centuries’, with this as no. 6: “Christ Teaching”

Footnote:

This is a long-lost cutting from a fascinating Neapolitan choir book, apparently produced by French artists in the Kingdom of Naples during the Angevin rule there, perhaps connected to King Robert of Anjou or a member of his court. 182 leaves of this choir book now survive in the National Museum in Stockholm (MS B.2101, see C. Nordenfalk, Bokmålningar från Medeltid och Renässans, 1979, pp. 82-85), with another cutting certainly appearing in Bloomsbury Auctions, London, 9 December 2015, lot 81 (and later reappearing as Sotheby’s, 6 December 2026, lot 5), and others most probably among the collection of Georges Wildenstein (d. 1963; now Paris, Musée Marmottan, M.6123–6125; one reproduced by Nordenfalk, fig. 223). The part now in the National Museum in Stockholm was purchased in Naples in 1857, and the emphasis given to SS. Francis and Clare in its contents suggests that the original parent book was made for the major church of the city, Santa Chiara, or the Franciscan and Clarissan monasteries that are part of the same structure there.

Two artists can be discerned in the surviving parts, with that here the more refined of two, who blends Italian and French motifs to form a bewildering and enticing hybrid style of medieval art. The cuttings in the Wildenstein collection have now been attributed to an illuminator from Picardy working in Naples (see F. Avril, et al., Les Enluminures: Collection Wildenstein, 2001, no.35; and the same author’s ‘Un atelier “picard” a la Cour des Angevins de Naples’, in “Nobile claret opus”, 1986, pp. 76-77). The Kingdom of Naples fell under French-Angevin rule from 1266 until the mid-fifteenth Century, and King Robert of Anjou and his wife Sancia of Majorca were patrons of Santa Chiara in the first half of the fourteenth century. The artist here may have been a member of their entourage, or of a follower of theirs from France, who adapted his own native style to that of a foreign milieu.

We would like to thank Dr. Timothy Bolton for assistance with the cataloguing of this lot

Condition Report:

Some small smudges and traces of old folds commensurate with age, traces of previous mounting on reverse