Lot 19B email save

Illuminated manuscript leaf, Paris, c. 1530. Chris

Illuminated manuscript leaf, Paris, c. 1530. Christ appearing before the Virgin, full-page miniature on vellum. [Paris, c. 1530].

A large manuscript leaf (390 x 269 mm). The Virgin stands at left in front of drapery behind a reading desk or pulpit with open prayerbook, opening her hands in surprise at the vision of the resurrected Christ to her left , above her flies an angel carrying one of several gold-lettered banners, in front of the Virgin stand St. Peter and the kneeling male donor Pierre Descornes, on a marble parquet floor, in the right foreground kneels the female donor Sister Madelaine Lombarde in front of Mary Magdalene, a pastoral landscape in the background, the scene within an architectural frame in gold with twisting columns in russet and green and incorporating a pair of stylized dolphins at top, at bottom a cartouche with the donors' names lettered within a rectangular cartouche in gold on a blue ground: MAISTRE PIERRE DE CORNIBUS and SEVR MAGDALAINE LOMBARDE, on a ground of deep blue with a semis of gold dots and tear drops, the initials of Madelaine Lombarde M and L in left and right top and bottom corners, and the monograms IHS and ?MA below. Matted, in a gilt-wood frame (unexamined out of frame). Condition: rubbed area at upper right, occasional slight rubbing or flaking a large and very fine full-page miniature from a sumptuous service book. Pierre Descornes (Petrus de Cornibus, D. 1549) was a Franciscan priest who condemned Luther and Erasmus in his sermons, and who was mocked by Rabelais in Book III of Gargantua and Pantagruel. The figural styling and careful modeling of the flesh on the resurrected Christ, together with the use of banderoles, the bold coloring, decorative gilding, and complex architectural detailing, relate this miniature to the Parisian illuminator Etienne Collault and his circle. Collault worked for Francis I and members of the court in the 1520s and 1530s.