A Confessor Saint, historiated initial on a leaf from a Gradual, illuminated manuscript on vellum [Milan, c.1405]

A charming, lively initial by an engaging Lombard artist identified by Kay Sutton as Tomasino da Vimercate.

c.450 x 305mm. 8 lines of text and music on a four line stave, the text begins at the end of the Common of One Martyr (Pope): '[Semel iuravi in sancto meo semen eius in] eternum manebit et sedes eius'; the initial 'O' opening the introit for the Mass of the Nativity of one Confessor (not Pope), 'Os iusti meditabitur', large flourished initials in red and blue, rubrics in red, contemporary foliation 'ccxxii' (slight rubbing of gold on halo, show-through of the red ink from the music-staves). Mounted and in a double-sided frame.

Illumination:
It is the work of an artist first defined, and named, in relation to a Book of Hours in Modena. The certain recognition of one of the manuscripts attributed to him, a volume in Cambridge (Fitzwilliam Museum, CFM 9), as the book recorded in payments made by the Cathedral of Milan to the illuminator Tomasino da Vimercate, allowed him to be identified: K. Sutton, 'The Master of the Modena Hours, Tomasino da Vimercate and the Ambrosianae of the Cathedral of Milan', The Burlington Magazine, 133 (1991), pp.87-91.

Tomasino's lively compositions, decorative vocabulary, and bright, blonde palette reveal an enduring debt to the previous generation of illuminators who worked for the Visconti court. These features make for a style of immediate appeal, and Tomasino dominated Milanese manuscript illumination from the 1390s until at least 1417. In addition to ecclesiastical patrons he too worked for members of the Visconti court and chancery and undertook the illustration of secular as well as religious manuscripts. A sister-leaf with an initial of an Apostle opening Mass on the feast of an apostle from the Common of Saints from the same manuscript was offered at Christie's on 23 November 2011, lot 5.