GHERARDUCCI, Don Silvestro dei
(b. 1339, Firenze, d. 1399, Firenze)

Gradual from Santa Maria degli Angeli (Folio 148)

c. 1370
Tempera and gold on parchment, 292 x 299 mm
Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York

Among the various choir books that Don Silvestro illuminated for his monastery, Santa Maria degli Angeli, one (Cod. Cor. 2, now in the Biblioteca Laurenziana, Florence) clearly stands out for its high artistic quality. As were most of the Santa Maria degli Angeli choir books which entered the Biblioteca Laurenziana, it was mutilated in the Napoleonic period. Twenty pages - many of them the most important and most beautiful - were cut from this gradual and found their way into various collections. There are thirty-eight present and missing illuminations in the codex on which a reconstruction can be based.

The cutting from folio 148 depicts the Birth of the Virgin in an initial G. This initial begins the introit to the Mass for the feast of the Birth of the Virgin (September 8). The letter G overgrown by rich foliage with lilies, opens into the interior of St Anne's bedroom. Having given birth to a daughter, she sits up on her bed and glances at her child, who is about to be bathed. A maiden with the heavenly child on her lap is testing the temperature of the water in the bowl, while another adds some more water to it. The iconography is Sienese, faithfully following the composition of Pietro Lorenzetti's altarpiece for Siena cathedral.




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