Beschreibung:

Christ on a donkey within an initial, on a leaf from an illuminated Processional, in Latin, on parchment [north eastern Italy (perhaps Padua), early sixteenth century] Single leaf, with a large initial ‘Q’ (opening "Quum appropinquaret dominus hierosolymam …": the antiphon for the Palm Sunday procession) in green leafy bands on brightly burnished gold grounds, enclosing a half-length study of Christ seated on a donkey facing the viewer, a full decorative border on two sides of a delicately executed classical architectural plinth from which grey foliage grows, enclosing two cabochons (these with figures of a bearded man and a seated figure with a spear picked out in gold paint on soft red grounds), these borders enclosed within gold edging and with gold tassels at their tips, single column of 6 lines of text in an excellent late gothic bookhand with music on 4-line red staves (rastrum 15mm.), one small chip and a smudge to border, else in outstanding and bright condition, 261 by 187mm. This leaf is a fugitive from the fragmentary processional acquired by Philip Hofer from Lapiccirella, Florence, in 1955, and subsequently given to the Houghton Library, Cambridge, MA., their MS typ. 310 (see R.S. Wieck, Late Medieval and Renaissance Illuminated Manuscripts, 1983, p. 131 and illustrated pl. 52, cited M. Huglo, Les Manuscrits du Processionnal II, 2004, pp. 475-6, and with significant leaves reproduced in their online catalogue). The decoration is eye-catching and opulent, and redolent of the style of Benedetto Bordone (1460-1531), one of the last great miniaturists of the Italian Renaissance. See for comparison the manuscript illuminated by him, sold Sotheby’s, 18 May 1981, lot 19.