Initial 'C' with the Virgin and Apostles
Cutting from a choir book
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This initial was once part of a choir book decorated by the Florentine-born illuminator Littifredi Corbizzi (1465-c. 1515) for the Monastero di San Benedetto in Gubbio. Payment records published by Giuseppe Mazzatinti in 1884 reveal that Littifredi -- refered to here as Maestro Litti -- worked on this commission in Siena between 1499 and 1503; he was one of a number of illuminators and scribes, including Boccardino 'il Vecchio', working on a series of liturgical books for the monastery at the turn of the 16th century.
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Once complete, howevever, the books did not stay at San Benedetto for long. In 1521, on the orders of Pope Leo X, the monks (and thus their codices) were transfered to the nearby Convento di San Pietro, also in Gubbio, where they remained until the 19th century.
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Circa 1835 the German artist and collector Johann Anton Ramboux (1790-1866) visited Gubbio and San Pietro. Here he made a number of tracings of illuminations from what appears to be a single manuscript: Littifredi's. Among the four sheets of tracings from San Pietro, now preserved at the Städel Museum in Frankfurt, is a copy of a miniature with the Coronation of Christ by Littifredi (Berlin, Kupferstichkabinett, Min. 3342) -- the subject of a recent study by Beatrice Alai -- and the Initial 'P' with Saints Flora and Lucilla.
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As Ada Labriola has pointed out, a number of choir books from San Pietro were transfered to the state archive in 1860, already missing much of their original decoration. This serves as a terminus ante quem for the removal of the initial 'C', however, it seems likley it was earlier. The codices are now at the Archivio di Stato di Perugia and have been fully digitised; one manuscript (Corale 50 E) shows evidence of 58 individual excisions as well as the complete removal of several folia.
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See bibliography.
General Information
Current Condition
Book Decoration and Musical Notation
Within the initial window, in the foreground, stand St Peter and the Virgin Mary; the remaining Apostles are crammed together behind. While Littifredi has only painted the heads of ten Apostles -- in some cases simply showing their forehead and hair -- he includes two extra halos, just visible at the top of the initial, thus ingeniously negating the spatial constraints of the initial and creating the impression of all twelve being present. The figures are set in front of a thin strip of sky painted in Ultramarine Blue.
The fleshy, foliate-entwined initial is typical of Flornentine late-Quattrocento illumination, however, the subleties of its form here -- the tonal modelling, filigree motif and distinctive framing of the window -- find striking precedents in Littifredi's earlier work (for example: Vatican, BAV, MS Ross. 177, fol. 1r; see Freuler 2013, pp. 861-63).
Verso not visible as the cutting is pasted down on card.
History
Siena
1) Part of a choir book made for the Monastero di San Benedetto, Gubbio, 1499-1503;
2) tranfered to the Convento di San Pietro in 1521, where it remained until the 19th century;
3) initial removed before 1860 when the mutilated codices from San Pietro were transfered to the state archive;
4) initial framed by "Frédéric Petit / Rue Ampère 95 / Dorure & Encadrements" in Paris, probably at the end of the nineteenth or beginning of the twentieth century;
5) offered at Beaussant Lefèvre, Paris, 5/4/2013, lot 54;
6) offered at Sotheby's, London, 8/12/2015, lot 19 [no sale];
7) offered at Bloomsbury, London, 2/7/2019, lot 55 [no sale];
8) acquired from Sam Fogg, London, by present owner.
Bibliography
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For the monastery's payment records:
- G. Mazzatinti, "Storia delle arti a Gubbio," in Archivio storico per le Marche e per l'Umbria, ed. M. Faloci Pulignani, M. Santoni, and G. Mazzatinti (Foligno: Presso la Direzione, 1884), pp. 41-47.
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For the sister cutting at the Kupferstichkabinett:
- Beatrice Alai, Le miniature italiane del Kupferstichkabinett di Berlino (Firenze: Edizioni Polistampa, 2019), cat. 44, pp. 196-97.
- Ada Labriola, 'Miniature rinascimentali riprodotte nel XIX secolo. Gaetano Milanesi, Carlo Pini e Giovanni Rosini: dai calchi grafici ale stampe di traduzione," Rivista di Storia della Miniatura 20 (2016): p. 165, n. 9.
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For more on Johann Anton Ramboux:
- Dóra Sallay, "The Sienese Paintings in Hungary: A History of Collecting, Conservation and Previous Research," in Corpus of Sienese Paintings in Hungary (Florence: Centro Di, 2015), pp. 13-24.
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For more on Littifredi Corbizzi:
- Gaudenz Freuler, Italian Miniatures, vol. II (Milan: Silvana Editoriale, 2013), pp. 861-63.
- Diego Galizzi, "Corbizzi, Littifredi (Litti)," in Dizionario biografico dei miniatori italiani, ed. Milvia Bollati (Milano: Sylvestre Bonnard, 2004), pp. 174-75.
- Annarosa Garzelli, Miniatura fiorentina del Rinascimento (Firenze: La Nuova Italia, 1985), pp. 333-34, 37-39.