Old Testament prophets, three initials cut from a choirbook, illuminated manuscript on vellum [Veneto, c.1470]

Three charming initials of Prophets by a distinctive artist working in the ambit of the Master of the Murano Gradual.

Each cutting 75 x 75mm. Laid down on card.

Provenance:
(1) From a series of cuttings dismembered before 1953, one of which is at Yale (1954.7.4), given by Robert Lehman in 1954, and previously sale of André Hachette, Paris, 1953, lot 58.

(2) Sotheby's, 8 December 2009, lot 9.

Illumination:
The 2009 Sotheby's catalogue attributed these cuttings to a follower of Cristoforo Cortese (active c.1390-1445). But they are also associated with another cutting depicting a Prophet in an initial 'I' (now Yale 1954.7.4) by the circle of the Master of the Murano Gradual (active c.1430-1460), one of the most distinctive and gifted artists active in northern Italy in the mid-15th century, who takes his name from a Gradual for the Temporale (Berlin, Kupferstichkabinett, MS 78 F.1) and a series of cuttings—including two at the Getty Museum, Los Angeles (MSS 73 and 106) and another at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York (Rogers Fund, 48.40). The Prophet initial is described by Mia Palladino in Treasures of a Lost Art, 2003, no 60, pp.125-126, where it is linked to another cutting of a prophet in the Mortimer Brandt collection (Sotheby's 20 June 1995, lot 32). Like these two—much larger—miniatures, the figures in the present cuttings have much stronger and more sculptural features than what we traditionally find in the work of the Master of the Murano Gradual. In his blogpost on the Yale and Mortimer Brandt cuttings, Peter Kidd links them to a number of other initials probably by the same artist published Ágnes Tóvizi, 'Some newly discovered Quattrocento illuminations in Székesfehérvár', Arte cristiana, 96 (2008), pp.307-12 (see P. Kidd, https://mssprovenance.blogspot.com/2020/08/another-hachette-lehman-yale-cutting.html).