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click to zoomDon 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

 

'R' from the Gradual of Santa Maria degli Angeli
c.1375

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The British Library
London
United Kingdom

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.