Beschreibung:

DAVID IN PRAYER, historiated initial 'D' on a leaf from an illuminated Psalter on vellum [Lombardy, c.1460-70] A ravishing example of late Gothic Lombard illumination, once part of a lavishly illuminated Psalter perhaps commissioned by a member of the Visconti court. 520 x 270mm. 14 lines of text, initial 'D' ('Dominus illuminatio mea') opening Psalm 26 (some marginal soiling, slightly trimmed, loss of burnished gold to initial ground and bezants). Provenance : From a Psalter likely dismembered during the Napoleonic era. Six companion leaves survive (one, the frontispiece, in a private US collection, and 5 with Dr Jörn Günther Antiquariat) and these give a clue as to the possible origin of the parent manuscript. The bas-de-page of the frontispiece contains the monogram 'YhS' in gold surmounted by a gold crown, a motif used by Filippo Maria Visconti, duke of Milan (1412-1447), and his court, while the saints in the border indicate that the manuscript was made for a Franciscan convent, perhaps that of Sant' Angelo in Milan. The 'Pax' on the present leaf is also surmounted by a golden crown, and it has been suggested that the presence of these emblems point to an ownership by Bianca Maria Visconti (1424-1486), daughter of Filippo Maria and wife of Francesco Sforza (1401-1466). The illumination is the work of a close associate of the Master of the Vitae Imperatorum (fl.1430-50), who came to dominate manuscript illumination at the court of Filippo Maria Visconti during the second quarter of the fifteenth century. He is named after an Italian translation of Suetonius (Paris, BnF, ms.ital.131) made for the duke in 1430. The bold and economical palette of clear bright colours and the fleshtones rendered with salmon pink shading and white highlighting on bare parchment are hallmarks of the Master’s style. The elegant fluidity of the draperies ultimately goes back to Michelino da Besozzo, the other great Lombard illuminator of the first half of the century. The facial features and thick curls of hair are notably close to the figure of God in a historiated initial by the Master in the Cini collection. See A. Melograni, ‘Appunti di miniature lombarda. Ricerche sul Maestro delle Vitae Imperatorum’, Storia dell’A rte, 1990, pp.274-314.