Beschreibung:

GOD THE FATHER AND ALL SAINTS, historiated initial S on a leaf from an ILLUMINATED MANUSCRIPT CHOIRBOOK ON VELLUM
GOD THE FATHER AND ALL SAINTS, historiated initial S on a leaf from an ILLUMINATED MANUSCRIPT CHOIRBOOK ON VELLUM [?Alsace, final quarter 15th century] 530 x 393mm. A circular initial S with pink staves against a diapered ground of green, pink and burnished gold, framed in green and with a spray with leaves, fruit and flowers into the margin; the infill with a central God the Father in a cloud-edged mandorla surrounded by adoring saints and the haloes of saints; eight lines in brown ink in a gothic bookhand below four-line staves of red with music of square notation; a calligraphic initial with two faces; sewing holes from curtain above initial: on the verso , rubrics in red, calligraphic initial with faces and cusps and a skeletal blue initial with red flourishing (faint spotting in margins, God's silver robe oxidised). This leaf came from an Antiphonal where the initial opened the Antiphon 'Summe trinitati simplici deo una divinitas' for the feast of All Saints. This charming and colourful initial has all the stylistic characteristics associated with the handiwork of nuns; the so-called 'Nonnenarbeiten' -- devotional objects made by cloistered women for their own use. The preponderance of female saints among those gathered around God would be an appropriate and encouraging example to the sisters. The treatment of figures and foliage is schematic and decorative; the rosy-cheeked pale faces have minimally drawn features and everything is portrayed in a restricted range of clear bright colours. While there is a generic similarity in conventual art from across the German-speaking world, the present leaf is especially close to an initial G with Saints Martha, Agatha and Elizabeth of Hungary (Princeton University, Art Museum, Y1031) that has been proposed as possibly originating in Alsace: J. Hamburger, Nuns as Artists: The Visual Culture of a Medieval Convent , 1997, p.19. The presence among the female saints of one wearing the Dominican habit suggest that the choirbook may have been made in a Dominican house.