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This large detached page from a Gradual contains the Introit that begins the Mass for the Common of the Apostles, “Mihi autem nimis honorati sunt amici tui Deus.” Inside the large initial M, a Blessing Christ holds open the Book of Life, which displays the Alpha and Omega characters symbolizing the Beginning and the End of his reign. The profusion of multicolored animals and the density of the floral forms recall styles of illumination practiced in Florence and Pistoia around the middle of the fifteenth century. The rough style of the miniatures, however, echoes some of the illuminations by Sienese artists Giovanni di Paolo (ca. 1403–82) and Pellegrino di Mariano (act. 1449–92). Its dimensions and the inclusion of only four lines of chant give an idea of the scale of the original set of choir books.

The Missal contains all instructions and texts necessary for the celebration of the Mass throughout the year. As a visible accessory to the celebration of the Mass, the Missal was embellished with significant decoration. The decoration in this Netherlandish Missal demonstrates the extent to which pictorial trends could migrate from centers of book production toward more regional settings. The irises, thistles, and carnations that decorate the illuminated frames for the major subdivisions within the book hark back to border decoration that was fashionable in Ghent-Bruges style Books of Hours in the late fifteenth century. The historiated initials of Saint Benedict and Saint Martin are evidence that the book was intended for a Benedictine monastery dedicated to the latter, perhaps Saint Martin of Tournai.

This compact Hebrew manuscript provides evidence of the intellectual exchanges that animated the daily life of one of Northern Italy’s most prominent Jewish families, the Finzi. The first portion of the volume contains copies of twenty letters in which the names of various members of the dynasty occur frequently. The first letter identifies the astronomer and mathematician Mordekhai Finzi (ca. 1407–76), Yehudah of Rhodos (Rhodes?), and Abraham Kohen as “men of influence at the courts of the Pope and the King of France.” Lastly included is the Sefer ha-seder ha-katan, an anonymous translation from Arabic into Hebrew of an abridgment of Avicenna’s Qānūn fī al-ṭibb (Canon of Medicine), which begins with a list of human limbs and their qualities, and proceeds to the middle of the third book, which is dedicated to special pathology, or diseases concerning single organs.

This leaf has been excised from a manuscript copy of Francis Petrarch’s epic Latin poem Africa. Petrarch’s text recounts the Carthaginian general Hannibal’s invasion of Italy during the Second Punic War. The Romans prevailed under the leadership of Scipio Africanus (236–183 BC) to eventually defeat the Carthaginians. The initial, showing Scipio in a triumphal chariot, begins Book IX of the poem, which describes the Roman general’s heroic triumph. Scipio is shown crowned with a laurel wreath and carrying a scepter crowned with an eagle.The full manuscript was at one point owned by the early humanist Adoardo da Thiene of Vicenza, as confirmed by the presence of the coat of arms of the Thiene family.

This detached manuscript leaf introduced the hour of Prime for the Hours of the Virgin in a Book of Hours produced in France in the second decade of the sixteenth century. This miniature of the Presentation in the Temple is attributed to a close associate of the Master of the Parisian Entries, an artist potentially identifiable through an inscription in another one of his works as Jean Coene IV (act. ca. 1490–1520). The busy, asymmetrical columns, playful putti, and hanging garlands are typical of the French adaptation of all’antica ornament, which resembles that of contemporary Veneto-Paduan frontispieces.

This beautiful illuminated leaf contains the incipit of the “Ave sanctissima Mater” prayer, a short but direct personal appeal for the Virgin Mary’s intercession. The prayer is found from the 1470s onward and was often attributed to Pope Sixtus IV (r. 1471–84), in an accompanying rubric granting an indulgence of 11,000 years for its recitation. The striking miniature on this page shows a kneeling male devotee, looking up at the Virgin and Child. This iconography known as the Virgin of Loreto was developed to illustrate the story of the miraculous translation of the Virgin’s house from the Holy Land to Italy. The elaborate shell gold frame, the unfurled text banderole, and the style of the miniature itself all point to the work of the Master of François de Rohan (act. ca. 1525–ca. 1546) and Étienne Colaud (act. ca. 1512–ca. 1541), leading illuminators active in Paris in the 1520s and 1530s.

Impressed by lectures on Neoplatonism given by the Byzantine intellectual Gemisthus Pletho during the Council of Florence, Cosimo de’ Medici installed Marsilio Ficino (1433–99) as the head of a newly founded Platonic Academy in 1462. The Academy’s goal was the promotion of Plato over Aristotle as the philosopher of choice for modern Christians. To achieve this end, Ficino translated the known corpus of Platonic and Neoplatonic works. This manuscript likely belonged to an early member of the Academy. The first section consists of works by Ficino, all produced in the 1460s and 1470s and closely linked to the activities of the Academy. Ficino dedicated four of these translations to his close friend, Giovanni Cavalcanti (1444–1509) and composed a short letter addressed to Cavalcanti on the subject of friendship and the proper use of Plato’s teachings. The manuscript predates the first edition of Plato’s works in Latin by Ficino.

This initial has been excised from an eleventh-century copy of Florus of Lyon’s commentary on the Epistles of Paul: the fragmentary text visible on the reverse side includes the conclusion of the commentary on Philemon and the beginning of the section on Hebrews. Florus (ca. 810–60) was a theologian, canonist, and liturgist educated in the spirit of the Carolingian Renaissance. His work on the Pauline Epistles was widely copied in the following centuries. The white-vine scroll decoration seen in this fragment—known in Italian as bianchi girari—is typical of manuscript illumination associated with the Romanesque period. It was later borrowed by humanist scribes and illuminators who thought the texts they were copying were ancient, or at least reliable copies of lost originals.

This large, decorated initial B is a fragment cut from the beginning of a twelfth-century copy of Cassiodorus’s book on the Psalms, the Expositio psalmorum. Text on the reverse side of the cutting is identifiable as the preface of Cassiodorus’s work. Here, the large letter B begins the short excerpt from Psalm 1, “Beatus vir..”

This initial comes from the choir books from the Olivetan monastery of Santi Angelo e Niccolò at Villanova Sillaro, outside of Lodi. The series of twenty choir books commissioned by that community was a major financial, logistical, and artistic enterprise and was repeated often in Italy and elsewhere, beginning in the thirteenth century, providing a ready clientele for ambitious illuminators like Master B.F. (act. ca. 1490–1545). Necessary for full liturgical celebrations, these choir books were produced prior to the completion of altarpieces, frescoes, and other para-liturgical furnishings.