Beschreibung:

FOUR SAINTS, full-page miniature from an ILLUMINATED MANUSCRIPT ON VELLUM
FOUR SAINTS, full-page miniature from an ILLUMINATED MANUSCRIPT ON VELLUM [Paris, c.1230-1240] 177 x 136mm. A quadripartite miniature divided into arched compartments by blue, red and gold frames topped by gothic buildings and depicting the martyrdoms of St John the Evangelist and St Sebastian, a crowned St Helena with book and processional cross and St Scholastica with book and crozier, all on grounds of burnished gold, verso blank (wear and pigment losses, especially to the face of St Helena, probably from kissing, two faces retouched, slight smudging to figures surrounding St Sebastian, upper margin cropped affecting upper extremities of the buildings). On a black card mount. Provenance : the leaf belongs to a series of four other full-page miniatures associated with an early 13th-century French devotional manuscript, namely 'The Virgin as Intercessor', Ferrini and Fogg, Medieval and Renaissance Miniature Painting , 1, 1988, no 4; 'Scenes from the life of St Mary Magdalene', Ferrini and Fogg, 2, 1989, no 2; 'The execution of four apostles', idem , no 3; 'The martyrdoms of Sts Stephen, Lawrence, Adrian and Thomas Becket', Sotheby's 3 December 2002, lot 51; Sotheby's 22 June 2004, lot 13. The style of illumination is associable to Paris c.1230 and is characterised by its soft, three-quarter faces and accentuated drapery folds. It is remarkably similar in composition to a Pontifical for the use of Châlons-sur-Marne (BnF, ms.lat.1246) and stylistically related to a Psalter owned by the Counts of Guines (BL Add.MS. 30045). See Robert Branner, Manuscript Painting in Paris during the Reign of Saint Louis , 1977, p.69 and fig.133.