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Don
Silvestro dei Gherarducci (13391399)
The Annunciation, surrounded by a large
initial R, from the Gradual of Santa
Maria degli Angeli, Florence c.1375
Add. MS 35254 C
By permission of The British Library
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'R'
from the Gradual of Santa Maria degli Angeli
c.1375
This
very large scale initial ‘R’ surrounds a miniature
of the Annunciation, showing the Angel Gabriel
announcing to the Virgin Mary that she is to be
the mother of Jesus Christ. It was cut from a
large volume of Latin liturgical music or ‘gradual’,
a choirbook containing all the music required
during the celebration of the Mass. The book had
to be very large as it was designed to be placed
on a lectern where it would be visible to a whole
group of singers at the same time.
The
style of this particular miniature, with its exquisite
grace, harmony of form and glorious colours, is
associated with Florence in the fourteenth century.
It was painted around 1375 by Don Silvestro dei
Gherarducci (1339–1399), a monk of the Camaldolese
monastery of Santa Maria degli Angeli. He was
a widely famed painter and miniaturist whose work
was particularly favoured by Lorenzo de Medici
(1449–1492), the Florentine statesman and patron
of arts and letters known as Lorenzo the Magnificent.
With Don Lorenzo Monaco (died c.1422) and Don
Simone Camaldolese, Gherarducci made up the most
important late medieval school of Florentine painters,
and enriched Florentine art with a new decorative
colour harmony. Although Don Silvestro is known
to have painted a number of altar pieces and devotional
panels, he is famed for his work as a manuscript
illuminator.
Many
manuscripts with beautiful illuminations such
as these were cut up for the sake of their decorations
during the early nineteenth century. Many works
from the exceptional book in which this miniature
originated were stolen in this way, and are now
dispersed among a number of collections. The remains
of the book itself are still in the Laurentian
Library, Florence.
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