Ms. leaf.
Title devised by cataloger.
Origin: Painted in Italy, possibly Milan, in the early 16th century.
Bibliographic record created by BPL staff based on description by Dr. Lisa Fagin Davis.
Notes (ownership):
Provenance: Perhaps cut from a choirbook made for the Olivetan monastery of SS Angelo e Niccolò at Villanova Sillaro near Lodi in Lombardy (see Maggs catalogue); other cuttings from the same choirbooks are scattered throughout collections in the United States and Canada. Later part of the music collection of Edward Holmes, his "no. 5" on verso.
Notes (acquisition):
Source of acquisition: Acquired in 1961 from Maggs, catalogue 880, no. 71.
Notes (date):
This date is inferred.
Notes (object):
Script: Written in a Gothic rotunda in black ink.
Layout: Two staves extant on verso. Square Gregorian notation on a four-line red staff.
Decoration: On the recto, a two-staff high floriate initial D in deep pink on gold, historiated with a standing portrait of St. Agnes: the saint stands in the foreground, holding a book and palm frond, a lamb (her attribute) at the right; in the far background, a miniature scene of Agnes burnt at the stake. Unsigned, but attributed by Maggs to the Milanese artist known as "Master B. F."
Binding: Mounted in a heavy matte and housed in an oversize folder.
Notes (bibliography):
Bibliography: Palladino, Treasures of a Lost Art: Italian Manuscript Painting of the Middle Ages and Renaissance, 142-43; Mirella Levi D'Ancona, The Wildenstein Collection of Illuminations: The Lombard School (Florence, 1970), 99.
