Pietro Guindaleri, Italy, Mantua, 1483–1494 (?)

Description

Previously unknown and unpublished, this spectacular leaf comes from the Hours of Isabella d’Este of Gonzaga (1474–1539) written by one of the most celebrated of Renaissance scribes, Bartolomeo Sanvito (1433–1511) (Cambridge, Harvard University, Houghton Library, MS Typ 213). Conceived on a grand scale, far larger than any of the eleven other Books of Hours associated with Sanvito, this manuscript, which has been well-studied by Laura Nuvoloni, Albinia de la Mare, and others, was executed in two stages. Composed for a still-unidentified patron, the first part contains only the Office of the Virgin, written in a hand that is firm and upright, like the style of Sanvito’s beautiful littera antiqua script in the 1480s. Whereas the second part, containing the Calendar, the Seven Penitential Psalms, and the Offices of the Cross and Holy Spirit is written later and in a looser hand for the marriage of Isabella d’Este to Francesco II Gonzaga in 1490, but before about 1494, during a visit by Sanvito to Mantua. The manuscript was an exceptionally deluxe production, including stained purple and green leaves, miniatures preceding each of the hours, and historiated initials for each hour. The evidence for Isabella as intended owner exists in two prayers at the end of the volume giving the supplicant’s name as “famulam tuam Ysabellam” (thy servant Isabella).

Alas when the Book of Hours was purchased by Philip Hofer from Quaritch in 1933 following the Chester Beatty sale in London (Sotheby’s, London, 9 May 1933, lot 64), it was already missing many leaves, including all its full page illuminations. Until now, only three full-page miniatures are known to survive from the manuscript, two in the Musée Condé in Chantilly (Divers MS VI, MSS 356 and 357) and the other, as Gaudenz Freuler pointed out to me, a leaf with the Dance of Death illustrating the Office of the Dead, sold at Sotheby’s in London (7 July 2015, lot 27, there attributed to Birago). Representing the uncommon Appearance of Christ to the Virgin and the Pentecost at Sext and Vespers respectively of the Hours of the Virgin, the Chantilly leaves were purchased by Henri d’Orléans, the Duc d’Aumale, from Robinson in London in 1860. Initially published in 2000, the Chantilly leaves were then associated with the “fort problématique” (very problematic) Pietro Guindaleri and recognized, based on a 1999 publication by Albinia de la Mare, as being by the hand of Sanvito and coming from the Book of Hours of Isabella d’Este Gonzaga. No leaves have turned up before or after until this Annunciation, which originally prefaced the Hours of the Holy Ghost, which explains the appearance of the Dove and the Cherubim in the sky above the Virgin. The unusual iconography must be due in part by the presence of the more traditional representation of Pentecost on the Chantilly leaf. The Annunciation was thus f. 142v in the Houghton codex facing f. 143, which depicts the Virgin Reading. The manuscript still includes seven historiated initials, of which four are called faceted. One of the faceted initials is that one facing the present leaf on f. 143, which Nuvoloni attributes to Sanvito himself. The leaves in Chantilly also include one historiated initial each, bringing the total to nine. These have been attributed to another hand, although in the publication of the Chantilly leaves, the authors observed their close proximity to the medallions in the Turin Pliny that are now attributed by Federica Toniolo to Guindaleri.

The four full-page illuminations from the Hours of Isabella d’Este Gonzaga bear striking similarities. The brocade-like borders remind us of the early commission Guindaleri received to design brocade fabric. Although the space is shallow in all three settings, the figures betray plasticity in body and facial features similar to the art of Mantegna. Compare both the pose and drapery, for example, the apostle in red on the left in the Pentecost to Mantegna’s earlier apostle in the Ascension in his Altarpiece of 1461 in the Uffizi. Mantegna’s wet, sculpturesque drapery is in full view especially in the f igures of Christ in Christ’s Appearance to the Virgin and in the majestic apostles in the Pentecost. To me, however, the Annunciation seems different. The scene is quieter, the figures less mobile, the drapery much softer, the faces less sculpturesque. In fact, reconsidering Guindaleri’s Cremona origins, this miniature begs comparison with Girolamo da Cremona (1451–1483) especially with his slightly earlier full-page Pentecost in the Getty Museum.

We are grateful to Gaudenz Freuler and Federica Toniolo for their expertise.

provenance

Mantua, Francesco Gonzaga and Isabella d’Este; before 1872 Vienna, Collection of Ludwig Freiherr von Biegleben (1812–1872), his collector’s stamp;

Vienna, Collection of Franz Trau, senior (1842 1905), his collector’s stamp;

unknown collection “SRS” (unidentified collector’s stamp);

Swiss Private Collection;

Kornfeld in Bern, 2017;

Swiss Private Collection.

literature

Related literature:

London 1981, p. 112, cat. 20 and pp. 114–15, cat. 24;

Chantilly 2000, pp. 40–44, nos. 10A and 10B;

Zanichelli in Bollati 2004, pp. 336–37;

De la Mare and Nuvoloni 2009, cat. 85, pp. 290–91;

Nuvoloni in Boston 2016, cat. 232, pp. 291–93.

learn

Pietro Guindaleri

Italy, Mantua, documented 1464–1506

One of the favored artists of the Gonzaga court, Pietro Guindaleri or “Guindalleriis” of Cremona entered the service first of Federico I Gonzaga (1441–1484), the Marquis of Mantua, in 1464, as stated in a letter of that year. He continued to work for the Gonzaga court and perhaps also for the Duke of Urbino, Federico da Montefeltro, until his death in 1506. In the absence of early works by him from Cremona, it has not been possible to clarify his formation, but his production during the Gonzaga years witnesses the profound influence of the innovative frescos of his contemporary, Andrea Mantegna (1431–1506), in the Ovetari Chapel in the Church of the Eremitani in Padua and the Camera degli Sposi in the Ducal Palace in Mantua. In 1469, he is documented as supplying designs for brocades for Federico, and then between 1479 and 1484, documents testify to his having illuminated a large Uffiziolo for Sigismondo Gonzaga. From 1489 to 1506, he was responsible for completing a Historia naturalis by Pliny, written by Matteo Contugi da Volterra between 18 November 1463 and 9 October 1468. The Pliny was still in his hands and incomplete at the time of his death; it has been securely identified as the manuscript severely damaged in a fire in 1904 in Turin (Biblioteca Nazionale Universitaria, Ms. I. I. 22-23). Written by the same scribe responsible for the Pliny, the Comedies of Tito Maccius Plautus in Madrid (Bibliotheca National MS Vit. 22-5) is also a documented work by him. Other works attributed to him, all or in part, Petrarch’s Canzoniere in London (British Library, MS Harley 3567), the Gospel Book of Federico da Montefeltro (Vatican City, BAV, Urb. Lat. 10), and the Book of Hours of Isabella d’Este of Gonzaga (Cambridge, Harvard University, Houghton Library, MS Typ 213; Chantilly, Musée Condé, Divers MS VI, MSS 356 and 357, and London, Sotheby’s, 7 July 2015, lot 27). Apart from the Pliny, there is no universal agreement on the attributions, for Guindaleri seems to have had a workshop through which he collaborated with others on the same manuscripts, including Guglielmo Giraldi, the Master of the Pliny of Ravenna (Giovanni Corenti), and the Master of the “occhi spalancati.”

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