Beschreibung:

SPANISH FORGER. Female saint with a layman and woman and a boatman. Large historiated initial N on an ILLUMINATED MANUSCRIPT LEAF ON VELLUM. [France, 1st quarter 20th century] 200 x 220mm. A female saint greeting or taking leave of a layman and woman before a castle and a ship with one sailor, in the background a castle or fortified city in a mountainous landscape; the whole within an initial N of blue with white tracery and with coloured foliate extensions on a gold ground. On the verso: text and music cut from an Italian antiphonary of the 14th-15th century. (Slight scaling of pigment and gold; normal craquelure; not examined out of frame.) Framed and glazed. The motifs of this miniature are among those frequently found in the work of the Spanish Forger, and the composition of this scene is particularly close to that of another miniature by the Forger offered in this sale. It was the Forger's practice to reuse old vellum, mostly from Italian choirbooks of the fourteenth or fifteenth century, an example of which can be seen on the verso of this miniature. This leaf, which is not listed by Voelkle (William Voelkle, The Spanish Forger , New York, 1978; id., The Spanish Forger , Milwaukee, 1987), closely resembles the initials reproduced in Voelkle 1978, figs 239-45 and 247. None of these examples, and none of those that parallel the themes of the present miniatures, have an attested provenance earlier than ca. 1930.