Beschreibung:

PRIMO MINIATORE DI SAN DOMENICO, artist . St. Peter Martyr and an unknown saint, four roundels cut from a LARGE-FORMAT ILLUMINATED DOMINICAN MANUSCRIPT CHOIRBOOK ON VELLUM. [Bologna, c. 1307-24]. Four roundels cut from two pages, diameter 70 mm. (2 3/4 in.); miniatures in colors and burnished gold, within borders of brown or green (including portions of the foliate ornamentation that accompanied the roundels), depicting (1) an unidentified saint, nude, hands clasped, lying or rolling on jagged rocks and bleeding, (2) the same saint in a cream-colored garment, lying in a coffin, (3) the same saint in the upper window of a church or shrine, outside the building a group of worshipers led by a child saint in blue holding a lighted candle, (4) St. Peter Martyr standing in a pulpit, preaching to an audience seated on either side. Some flaking of color, especially on the roundel depicting St. Peter Martyr; tipped to a velvet backing (the versos not examined) . The manuscript or manuscripts from which these roundels come were executed for the Dominican church of San Domenico in Bologna, the burial place of St. Dominic himself. From the complete series of choirbooks, ten volumes of the antiphonal and eleven volumes of the gradual are still found in the library of San Domenico (V. Alce and A. d'Amato, La Biblioteca di S. Domenico in Bologna , Florence, 1961, pp. 141-69). In the opinion of Giordana Mariani Canova, these books form the most important cycle of antiphonals executed in Bologna in the first quarter of the fourteenth century, provide the most important example of liturgical illumination from Emilia from the first half of that century, and constitute the prototype for a number of other choirbooks executed for San Domenico and other Bolognese religious houses ( Miniature dell'Italia settentrionale nella Fondazione Giorgio Cini , Venice, 1978, no. 6-17). These large-format choirbooks (leaf size greater than 600 x 400 mm.) typically contain five lines of text and music per page. Major feasts are introduced by historiated initials with three-quarter foliate borders that often incorporate historiated roundels in the lower border. The manuscripts are dated from the fact that the cycle includes the office of St. Alexius (approved for Dominican use in 1307), while the office of St. Thomas Aquinas (who was canonized in 1323 and whose feast was introduced into the liturgy in 1324) was omitted from its place in the liturgical year but was added in a supplement executed by one of the artists whose work is also found in the original series. At an unknown time before 1932 the codices at San Domenico were mutilated by the removal of pages and miniatures from a number of volumes. Of the cuttings, several leaves now belonging to the Fondazione Giorgio Cini have been linked to the set not only by similarity of style and format but also by the numbering of the pages and the continuity of the text, which show that the Venetian leaves fill lacunae in the Bolognese series (Mariani Canova, op. cit. ). Without the aid of text, the present roundels cannot be placed exactly, although the differences in subject and condition between the miniature of St. Peter Martyr and the other three suggest that the latter came from a different page. Alce's careful listing of folios missing or mutilated in the volumes at San Domenico ( op. cit. ) shows substantial damage to the Antiphonary of the Saints for March 25-May 24 (Corale 9), which would have included the feast of St. Peter Martyr (April 29), but he also notes that representations of Peter Martyr and of St. Dominic appear throughout the manuscripts, even where they have no specific illustrative function. The other three roundels undoubtedly provided a narrative supplement to an historiated initial that depicted the major event in the life of this saint. The present roundels are the work of the "primo miniatore di San Domenico," the most important of the seven illuminators whose work has been identified i