Beschreibung:

KING DAVID: a large historiated initial and full border on an extremely large leaf from a Dominican Choir Psalter, in Latin, illuminated manuscript on vellum[Italy (Romagna, Cesena?), late 15th century (c. 1485–90)]
a leaf, c. 545 × 370mm, ruled for up to 14 lines of text, or text and music on five-line staves, the lines alternately red or brown, with square notations, the recto with a VERY LARGE HISTORIATED INITIAL AND A FULL BORDER INCORPORATING SEVEN FIGURES, the initial ‘D’(ixit dominus) introducing Psalm 109, the first psalm sung at vespers on Sundays and one of the major divisions of the psalter, the border depicting the Four Evangelists at the corners, the Virgin and Child in the upper border, two Dominican saints in the side borders, perhaps Dominic and Thomas Aquinas, and in the lower border a bishop saint, the spaces between the figures with foliage and Renaissance ornament, putti, etc., the text on the verso extending to Ps. 109:6; the gold, pigments, and ink are somewhat worn, with some losses, the decoration in the outer and lower margins slightly cropped, but overall still a very lavishly illuminated and imposing leaf.
PROVENANCECarlo Bruscoli, art dealer, of Florence: bought from him in 1924 (with many other leaves from other manuscripts) by:ROBERT LEHMAN (1891–1969), of Lehman Brothers (de Ricci, Census, Il. p. 1711 no. C.1), whose illuminations were ‘one of the largest, most impressive private collections of Italian manuscripts assembled after the First World War and comparable only to the Cini Collection in Venice’, according to Philippe de Montebello, Director of The Metropolitan Museum, New York, where the collection was deposited for several decades: exhibited from 2003 to 2004 at the Cleveland Museum of Art, the Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco, and the Metropolitan Museum itself (Palladino, 2003); by descent to Lehman’s son Robin, who sold the collection in 2004.Sale in our rooms, 6 December 2011, lot 18.Sale in our rooms, 5 July 2016, lot 30; bought by:The Boehlen Collection, Bern, MS 1434.
ILLUMINATIONPia Palladino notes the close similarity between the present leaf’s style, palette, and border decoration, and some of the Graduals from the Cathedral of Cesena (Biblioteca Malatestiana, Corali A–G), datable to after 1486 (Palladino, 2003; Cucciomini, 1989). She observes that the present leaf is especially close to the work of the so-called Romagnole Master of Duomo C, who illuminated most of Corale C and part of Corale E (Lucchi, 1989, pp. 121–25, 130–33), and that a similar style is found in volumes made for the cathedral at Imola (about 30 miles / 50km north-west of Cesena), suggesting that the artists of the Cesena choirbooks also worked elsewhere in the region. As Cesena does not seem to have had a Dominican house, the present leaf may have been made for the Dominicans of Forlì or Faenza, both of which lie between Cesena and Imola. Beatrice Alai (2016) discusses the leaf and suggests that, while it belongs to the same general orbit, it is less closely related in style to the choir books of Cesena cathedral than suggested by Palladino.
Psalm 109 is the first psalm sung at vespers on Sundays, and thus is one of the major divisions of the psalter. The opening verse, ‘The Lord said unto my Lord, sit at my right hand’, usually inspired artists to represent the Trinity, with God the Father and Son seated next to one another, and the Dove above. Here, instead, the artist has depicted King David (as the supposed author of the Psalms) playing the Psaltery and seated on a throne, under which two other kings are being crushed; this represents the next words of the opening verse: ‘Until I make thy enemies thy footstool’. If the manuscript was indeed made for Cesena, as suggested by Palladino, the bishop-saint in the middle of the lower border is perhaps St Maurus, 10th century bishop and patron-saint of Cesena.
REFERENCESP. Lucchi, ed., Corali miniati del quattrocento nella Biblioteca malatestiana (Milan, 1989).
M.F. Cucciomini, ‘La serie dei corali del Duomo nella miniatura dell’ultimo trentennio del quattrocento’, idem, pp. 37–46.
P. Palladino, Treasures of a Lost Art: Italian Manuscript Painting of the Middle Ages and Renaissance (New York, 2003), no. 51 (with full-page colour ill.).
B. Alai, ‘“Un salterio con due sole pagine miniate”: un manoscritto ritrovato della serie liturgica quattrocentesca per il duomo di Cesena e due documenti inediti di fine Ottocento’, Studi romagnoli, 67 (2016), pp. 591–631.