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Mariano del Buono, Workshop (with the Master of the Riccardiana Lactanius?), Italy, Florence, c. 1460–1470
Saint Benedict, in an Initial ‘V’, on a leaf from a Gradual
545 × 380 mm (leaf)
175 x 180 mm (miniature)
175 x 180 mm (miniature)
Mariano del Buono, Workshop (with the Master of the Riccardiana Lactanius?)
Saint Benedict, in an Initial ‘V’, on a leaf from a Gradual
Italy, Florence, c. 1460–1470
545 × 380 mm (leaf)
175 x 180 mm (miniature)
175 x 180 mm (miniature)
$25000.00
At the beginning of the Mass at the Feast of Saint Benedict (11 July), the Benedictine abbot and father of Western monasticism is depicted three quarter length dressed in a white tunic with a hood, holding a book containing his Rule and a rod of discipline. He stands out vividly against a red ground with yellow tracery, in a very large initial ‘V’ composed of plump blue, pink, and green acanthus on a burnished gold ground.
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Description
At the beginning of the Mass at the Feast of Saint Benedict (11 July), the Benedictine abbot and father of Western monasticism is depicted three quarter length dressed in a white tunic with a hood, holding a book containing his Rule and a rod of discipline. He stands out vividly against a red ground with yellow tracery, in a very large initial ‘V’ composed of plump blue, pink, and green acanthus on a burnished gold ground. Lavish marginal decoration full of gold bezants extends along the left margin, the initial itself introducing the feast with the words “Vir dei Benedictus mundi gloriam despexit” (The blessed man of God despised and left the glory of the world). Belonging to the first decade of Mariano’s activity, the work is related to the manuscripts of the Decades of Livy and the Plutarch, dated respectively 1464 and 1469 and cited above. The illuminator demonstrates a clear artistic affinity with Ser Ricciardo di Nanni, with whom Mariano collaborated between 1469 and 1471.
Given the unusually large depiction of Saint Benedict and the vast, florid calligraphic inscription on the recto occupying nearly one half of the written space – “In Festivitate Beatissimi Fratris Nostri Benedicti Abbatis” (On the Feast of Our most Blessed Brother Benedict the Abbot) – the leaf must come from a Gradual made for a Benedictine monastery. During this decade, Mariano maintained a relationship with the Badia Fiorentina, the oldest monastery in Florence and a Benedictine congregation. Documents show that he rented space in the sacristy of the Badia for his workshop between 1462 and 1465. Then, again in 1471, Mariano is documented as illuminating a Breviary and an Antiphonal for the Benedictines of the Badia Fiorentina (Florence, Biblioteca Riccardiana, Ricc. 284).
Our leaf shares stylistic similarities with a dismembered Antiphonal, of which seven leaves are preserved in the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York (inv. 96.32.5-11) and others in various private collections. The inclusion of a scene showing Saint Benedict Resuscitating a Boy confirms the Benedictine context of the parent manuscript of the MMA leaves (inv. 96.32.11). The facial and figural styles of Saints Andrew and of God the Father in the Trinity leaf resemble that of Saint Benedict in our initial. Comparable dimensions (MMA 567 × 396, versus 545 × 380, the present leaf which is trimmed at the top margin), similar decoration with plump acanthus, gold leaf initials, and bezants, and an analogous layout with five lines of square notation and calligraphic red rubrics, raise the possibility that the Gradual from which our leaf derives may once have been a companion volume to the Antiphonal from which the MMA leaves come. The artist of these leaves is generally thought to be the anonymous Master of the Riccardiana Lactanius, who may thus have been a member of the workshop of Mariano del Buono during these years, a suggestion advanced by Gaudenz Freuler, who sees him as collaborating with Mariano on the Saint Benedict leaf.
provenance
London, Sotheby’s, 2 December 2014, lot 21;
Switzerland, Private Collection.
literature
Related literature:
Levi d’Ancona 1962, pp. 175–82;
Garzelli 1985, vol. I, pp. 190 215;
Booton 1993/1996;
London and New York 1994, pp. 118ff;
Galizzi in Bollati 2004, pp. 727–29
learn
Mariano del Buono emerges as one of the most famous illuminators in Florence, where he headed a large workshop, collaborating with many Florentine artists of his generation, mainly in the last third of the fifteenth century. After a period in the early 1460s, when he rented a workshop in the Badia Fiorentina, documents suggest that he was a pupil of Bartolomeo Varnucci (c. 1412/1413–1479), who acted as guarantor in 1471 for him on the commission of some illuminated initials for a yet unidentified Antiphonal. His career is roughly divided into two phases. Early on, he distinguished himself by the production of texts with white vine decoration, the borders filled with playful putti and portraits, for example, a Decades of Livy dated 1464 (Florence, Riccardiana Library, Ricc.484) and a Plutarch dated 1469 (Modena, Biblioteca Estense, MS lat. 429). Around the same time, he collaborated with Francesco di Antonio del Chierico (1433–1484) on a De civitate Dei of Saint Augustine for the bookseller Vespasiano da Bisticci (London, British Library, Additional MS 15246). He also collaborated between 1469 and 1470 with Ser Ricciardo di Nanni (active 1449–1480) on a three-volume Livy (Munich, Bayerische Staatsbibliothek, Clm. 15731–15733). A turning point came in the late 1470s, when he worked between 1473 and 1477 on a Breviary for the Ospedale di Santa Maria Nuovo (Florence, Bargello, cod. 68) along with Gherardo di Giovanni di Miniato del Fora (1449 1497) and Girolamo da Cremona. (fl. 1451–1483), the latter an important influence on him. From that point onward, Mariano turned away from white-vine decoration and emphasized the three-dimensionality of the page, filled with landscapes and realistic animals, influenced by works of the Paduan/Ferrara region and the style of Mantegna. Throughout his career, he worked for many important clients: Ferdinand King of Aragon, Lorenzo de’ Medici and his son Piero, and the King of Hungary, Matthias Corvinus; he also enjoyed a special relationship with the Florentine banker, Francesco Sassetti, who commissioned many manuscripts from him. Several devotional books mark the later phase of his career, a Book of Hours for Magalena de’ Medici in 1488 (Waddesdon Manor, Rothschild Collection, MS 16) and an Offiziolo for Ciuliano della Rovere, (Rouen, Bibliothèque municipal, MS A 581 bis).