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Nerio, Italy, Bologna, c. 1315–1320
The Martyrdom of the Faithful, in an Initial ‘A’
from a Choir Book
from a Choir Book
548 × 371 mm (leaf); 131 × 125 mm (miniature)
Nerio
The Martyrdom of the Faithful, in an Initial ‘A’
from a Choir Book
Italy, Bologna, c. 1315–1320
548 × 371 mm (leaf); 131 × 125 mm (miniature)
$45000.00
This beautiful initial illustrates the opening of the first Responsory at Matins
for the Feast of the Common of Many Martyrs from a dismantled Italian
Antiphonal. The opening initial ‘A’ introduces the chant Absterget Deus
omnem lacrimam ob oculis sanctorum (God will wipe away every tear from
the eyes of the saints…). Directly illustrating martyrdom, two haloed saints
kneel on a patch of earth while two executioners stand over them, swords
upraised preparing for their beheading.
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Description
This beautiful initial illustrates the opening of the first Responsory at Matins for the Feast of the Common of Many Martyrs from a dismantled Italian Antiphonal. The opening initial ‘A’ introduces the chant Absterget Deus omnem lacrimam ob oculis sanctorum (God will wipe away every tear from the eyes of the saints…). Directly illustrating martyrdom, two haloed saints kneel on a patch of earth while two executioners stand over them, swords upraised preparing for their beheading. There can be little question that the illumination is by Nerio. Evident is his characteristic use of green underpaint for the faces, their deep-set eyes and Grecian noses, diminutive hands, as well as the sense of three dimensionality as one of the executioners and one of the martyrs break out of the frame of the letter.
The leaf fits with others perhaps from the same multi-volumed set of Choir Books, initially grouped together by Massimo Medica and considered to represent his mature style, when he came into contact with the Master of the Paduan Antiphonals. These include an initial ‘S’ where a similar executioner wearing the same distinctive armor with chain mail skirting stands in front of a tree (London, British Library, Add. MS 3205u, f. 2[a]). This executioner appears again in cuttings in Cambridge illustrating the Martyrdom of Saint Lucy and the Martyrdom of Saint Peter (Fitzwilliam Museum, Marlay Cutting It. 80a and b). The alluring fisherman casting a net in the initial ‘D’ of the Calling of Saints Andrew and Peter (ex-Zeileis Collection, Zurich, Koller, 18 September 2015, lot 141, location unknown), with only his eyes and part of his nose visible, has a direct counterpart in the martyr on the right in the present cutting, whose downturned face obscures his mouth and chin. All these initials share other decorative features: white dots surrounding the red trimmed haloes, similar dots on the interior frame of the initials, a muted palette of tan acanthus leaves surrounding off-white for the initials, which appear on a blue ground similarly dotted with irregular dots. For these details see also Abraham in Prayer and Isaac sending Esau in the Victoria and Albert Museum in London (inv. 9024D and 9024E). To this group, Medica adds three initials in Munich (Staatliche Graphische Sammlung, inv. 40093 40096). The influence of Giotto’s Arena Chapel frescos is evident in the spare backgrounds with sparse vegetation, the foreground action taken place on a rocky outgrowth, and the swooping figures with voluminous drapery.
Frequently illustrated in Italian Choir Books, the Response for this feast is presented with very different iconographies. Closest in date and subject is an Umbrian illumination depicting in the lower section of the ‘A’ a scene of martyrdom. Often, a generic, more static scene, depicting a group of martyrs prefaces the chant. One of the most interesting and unusual iconographies occurs in a cutting in the Getty attributed to the Florentine Master of the Antiphonary of San Giovanni Fuorcivitas from about 1345 1350 (MS 113); in an initial ‘A’ Christ literally wipes the tears from the eyes of the martyrs. Instead of illustrating the first line of the chant, Nerio has instead chosen to illustrate the idea that martyrdom signifies the victory of life over death, the very subject at the heart of the Feast.
provenance
United Kingdom, Private Collection.
literature
Related literature:
Conti 1981;
Avril et al. 1980, pp. 114–15, pls. LXXI–LXXIV;
Gibbs in Perrini 1990, pp. 55–76;
Medica in Bollati 2004, pp. 820–21.
learn
Nerio, a Bolognese miniaturist, was rediscovered by Alessandro Conti, who identified his signature, “Nerius fecit,” in a copy of the Code of Justinian in Paris (BnF, MS lat. 8941, f. 4r). This illuminator was probably active mostly in Bologna in the first two decades of the fourteenth century. In 1320, he is identified as the “late Nerio” in the record of a trial against Gualtiero di Pietro Eficax, who was accused of murdering one of his sons, Monte, also an illuminator; Nerio was therefore dead by this date. His artistic formation probably took place at the end of the thirteenth century in close contact with the Maestro del 1311, a collaborator of Jacopino da Reggio, who as a miniaturist was amongst the most sensitive and open to the innovations pioneered by Giotto. Together with the Maestro del 1311, Jacopino da Reggio played a fundamental role in Nerio’s formative years, as can be seen from miniatures in a manuscript of the Decretum Gratiani in Vyšší Brod (Knihovna kláštera, Cod. CXXXVII). Nerio’s contributions to multi-volume Choir Books are known through a number of dispersed historiated initials from cuttings and complete leaves, now in many public and private collections. Because of his enthusiastic assimilation of the Paduan Giotto, with his plasticity and interest in space, Nerio is universally credited with revolutionizing Italian manuscript illumination. Recent research on Nerio’s pigments reveals significant departures from his predecessors and contemporaries: his practice of applying an underlay of green paint for the faces, daubs of dark red or brown pigment to add definition, and the use of mosaic gold (tin mixed with mercury, sulfur, and ammonium chloride, then heated) in addition to gold leaf. His influence is apparent on the illuminators of the Dominican Choir Books, especially the Master of B 18, the Master of the Paris Gratian, and the Master of 1328 (for these artists see Cat. no. 20).