LORENZO Monaco
(b. ca. 1370, Siena (?), d. ca. 1425, Firenze)

Gradual (Cod. H 74, folio 122v)

c. 1410
Tempera and gold on parchment, 168 x 160 mm
Museum of Art, Cleveland

The tree volumes of the gradual written for Santa Maria Nuova in Florence are likely to have been produced at the same time (c. 1410) as the completion of the gradual for Santa Maria degli Angeli. One of them (Cod. H. 74 in the Museo Nazionale del Bargello, Florence) contains thirty-eight illuminated initials, all but one portraying single figures of prophets or saints. In addition, at least two of the seven missing folios contained large, perhaps full-page, narrative illuminations.

The cutting from one of the missing folios, folio 122v, depicts a Prophet in an initial D, which begins the introit to the Mass for the eleventh Sunday after Pentecost.

The pink and white initial D has an outer border of red embellished with a row of pearls and an inner border of blue decorated with gilt and glazed beads. Of extreme complexity, the green, blue, yellow, orange, gray, and pink foliate decoration is modeled with wash shadows and densely hatched pen-work highlights. Within the initial is the figure of a young (that is, beardless) prophet cropped just above the knees and wearing a yellow turban, a melon-coloured cape lined with blue, and a yellow tunic bound with a blue sash and worn over a melon skirt.




© Web Gallery of Art, created by Emil Krén and Daniel Marx.