Document Metadata
Franciscan Antiphonal – Fragment
Parchment · 8 leaves (consecutive) · 1490 – 1510 CE · Venice · 568 x 420 mmF-k1rd
New York City, Columbia University, Rare Book and Manuscript Library, Plimpton 040H
Latin
Plimpton MS 040H is an assemblage of eight large-format parchment leaves from a late medieval (or early Renaissance) Venetian Franciscan antiphonary, part of a six-volume choirbook set illuminated by the workshop of Benedetto Bordon for the small Franciscan convent of San Nicolò della Lattuga. The fragments preserve liturgical chants for the Common of Apostles, Common of Martyrs, and offices for a Confessor Bishop, each written in formal Gothic script with square notation on four-line red staves. Rich decoration—including historiated initials of Christ sending the apostles, a turbaned prophet, and a bishop, as well as an exceptional lower marginal medallion of Saint Francis with the donor Fra Pietro da Lucignano—embeds the manuscript within the highly self-conscious visual culture of late Quattrocento Franciscan spirituality. The pigments and stylistic features (malachite greens, vermilion reds, atmospheric landscapes, volumetric drapery) align the leaves with refined Italian Renaissance idiom, while the iconographic pairing of Christ commissioning the apostles with Francis blessing a kneeling Pietro articulates a distinctly Franciscan theology of apostolic succession. Originally dispersed among the Plimpton family after 1950, the decorated leaves were reunited and donated to Columbia University in 1995. Together, these fragments preserve the multisensory devotional world—visual, musical, and communal—of a Venetian Franciscan house at the turn of the late fifteen (or early sixteenth) century.
(Yunji Li, New York University (United States))-
Yunji Li, 2026
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01/25/2026
Franciscan Antiphonal
Parchment · 8 leaves (consecutive) · 1490 – 1510 CE · Venice · 568 x 420 mmF-k1rd
New York City, Columbia University, Rare Book and Manuscript Library, Plimpton 040H
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01/25/2026
Franciscan Antiphonal – Fragment
Parchment · 8 leaves (consecutive) · 1490 – 1510 CE · Venice · 568 x 420 mmF-k1rd
New York City, Columbia University, Rare Book and Manuscript Library, Plimpton 040H
Terms of Use
rbml@library.columbia.edu
01/25/2026
- 15th century
- Latin
- Gothic Script (generic)
- Antiphonar
- Figurative
- Ornamental
- Square Notation
- Role: Illuminator
- Authority Source: VIAF
- Biographical data:
- Role: Origin
- Authority Source: VIAF
Franciscan Antiphonal
F-k1rd
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New York City, Columbia University, Rare Book and Manuscript Library, Plimpton 040H, f_1r_detail_2 – Franciscan Antiphonal — https://fragmentarium.ms/view/page/F-k1rd/11753/84188/90
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