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This page is from the Visconti Book of Hours (397, fol. 115).
Manuscript illuminators led the way in promoting and popularising the conventions of International Gothic style. One of its earliest exponents in Lombardy was Giovannino de' Grassi, a multi-talented illuminator and painter who provided designs for Milan Cathedral. Around 1395 he produced a prayer book for Giangaleazzo Visconti, whose portrait, surrounded by the blazing device of the Visconti family, appears with a text from Psalm 118 on this page. Typical of the International Gothic style and of manuscript illumination in this period, the page includes a variety of artistic modes: some highly conventionalised, others strikingly naturalistic. Giangaleazzo's portrait, for example, is precisely rendered in profile. Derived from the tradition of Roman coins and medals, this formal pose allowed the ruler's distinctive features to be recognized easily by his subjects.
The illumination in the centre of the text represents King David, traditionally regarded as the author of the psalms. The setting is illusionistic enough to suggest a shallow cavity of space within the initial, but linear and decorative enough to respect the graphic demands of the letter it is enhancing.
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