Cristoforo Cortese
A Saint
Written in Latin, a fragment from a Gradual, likely the Introit for the Feast of the Common Martyrs, Justi epulentur… (The righteous shall feast…)
Northern Italy, Venice, circa 1420
Overall dimensions, 445 x 195 mm.
Historiated initial “I”, 105 x 97 mm.
Rastrum, 25 mm. with seven 4-lined staves in red ink
Tempera, ink and gold on parchment
$17,000
Painted by the famed Venetian artist Cristoforo Cortese, a Saint announces himself from behind an initial I for Justis. Surrounded by bright pigments of yellow and red on a blue background, this lively Saint is framed by curly leaves with drops of liquid gold dotted around the initial. This leaf has all the hallmarks of Cortese’s dynamic skills of interpreting emotion with his brush. There are sister leaves in the Victoria and Albert Museum, London and in the Free Library of Philadelphia, USA. His creativity here and in the figures and scenes in the surviving leaves from his Gradual manuscript are connected to a Camaldolese monastery on the island of Murano.
PROVENANCE
1. USA, private collection, (early 20th Century framing tag, S.Schwartz picture frames, 128 W 42nd Street, New York, with a note pasted in the back of the frame “This fragment is old German. The miniature is a perfect work of art. Age no less 500 years.”).
SISTER LEAVES
Saint Peter, initial ‘C’, (London, Victoria and Albert Museum, D.637A-1894).
Saint, initial ‘G’, and Saint, initial ‘S’, (Free Library of Philadelphia, Lewis E M 25:21 and Lewis E M 45:13).
Bearded Apostle, initial ‘T’, and Standing Saint, initial ‘E’, (London, Sotheby’s, 5 December 2006, lots 68-69; ex-F.G. Zeileis Collection; see G. Zeileis, “Più ridon le carte,” no. 11).
Entry into Jerusalem, initial ‘D’, (Cambridge, Fitzwilliam Museum, Marlay Cutting It. 20).
Prophet, initial ‘C’, (Bologna, Museo Civico Medievale).
Prophet (Isaiah?), initial ‘V’, (London, Sotheby’s, 5 December 2012, lot 8; Robert Lehman Collection, Palladino 2003, no. 39, pp. 75-76).
Bearded Bishop with a Book, initial ‘S’, (London, Sotheby’s, 22 June 2004, lot 23).
A Prophet, initial ‘D’ and St. Paul, initial ‘S’, (Les Enluminures, Paris, MIN 18-30 & 50012).
LITERATURE
F. Todini, ed., Una collezione di miniature Italiane, vol. 2, 1994, no. VII.
M. Bollati, Dalla Bibbia di Corradino a Jacopo della Quercia. Sculture miniature italiane del Medioevo e del Rinascimento, ed. A. Bacchi, Milan, 1997, pp. 128-129.
G. Freuler, Tendencies of Gothic in Florence: Don Silvestro dei Gherarducci, Corpus of Florentine Painting IV, vol. 7, part 2, Florence, 1997.
G. Zeileis, “Più ridon le carte”: Buchmalerei aus Mittelalter und Renaissance: Katalog einer Privatsammlung von illuminierten Einzelblättern, 2009 [2004], no. 11.
S. Panayotova, “Cristoforo Cortese in Cambridge,” Miniatura. Lo sguardo e la parola: Studi in onore di Giordana Mariani Canova, ed. F. Toniolo and Gennaro Toscano, Milan, 2012, pp. 186-189.
