Beschreibung:

Knights of the Crusades.
Large illuminated miniature on a leaf from a fifteenth-century Italian manuscript antiphonal on vellum. [Paris: c. 1900]. A large miniature (190 x 240) showing crusading knights arriving at the walls of Jerusalem. The lead knight is fully armed and mounted on a caparisoned horse. The Saracens are shown emerging from the city gate, their leader having just doffed his helmet and laid down his sword and shield in surrender to the victorious Crusaders. Outer border of gold, inner parti-colored border of blue and mauve with white penwork tracery. The miniature is painted in the upper half of a full antiphonal leaf on vellum (matted and framed, mat size 445 x 335 mm, unexamined out of frame). Below the miniature are 3 lines of musical notation of square neumes on 4-line staves in red, the chant in a gothic rotunda in brown ink ; decorated with a large illuminated initial Q, in blue with white tracery on a gold ground, possibly painted over an original initial, with central coat-of-arms; and a full page-border with scrolling acanthus leaves, gold disks, leafy tendrils, etc., embellished with a lady holding a dragon on a leash, a peacock, and a moor beating a drum. Condition: Some rubbing with loss to gold leaf, outer margin with border somewhat crackled and soiled . The late 19th-century "Spanish Forger," still unidentified, worked in Paris and was probably French. His rather obvious forgeries of medieval manuscript illuminations are collected in their own right. Most of his miniatures are cut-out examples; this example is one of only a few to preserve the entire manuscript leaf. The Forger evidently owned an original medieval Italian antiphonal which he cut up, using the individual leaves to paint scenes of medieval romance and chivalry.