Plan your visit. 225 Madison Avenue at 36th Street, New York, NY 10016.

Plan your visit. 225 Madison Avenue at 36th Street, New York, NY 10016.

De casibus virorum illustrium.

Accession number
MS M.943
Object title
De casibus virorum illustrium.
Created
Italy (Lombardy, Milan or Pavia), ca. 1385-1390.
Binding
Original vellum-covered boards.
Credit line
Purchased on the Fellows Fund, 1969.
Description
117 leaves (1 column, 37-39 lines), bound : vellum, ill. ; 260 x 197 mm
Provenance
Visconti family, Milan? (in the verse on the back pastedown: Magnificum factis generosum sanguine et ipsa/Natura est genus Anguigerum dominabile terris...; the genus anguigerum (snake-bearing family) has been interpreted to refer to the Visconti family of Milan); Hamill & Barker, Chicago, purchased from Hamill & Barker and Gift of the Fellows, 1969.
Notes
Ms. secular literature; written and illuminated in Italy, Lombardy, Milan or Pavia, ca. 1385-1390.
Collation: I², II¹⁰-XII¹⁰, XIII⁵.
Scribe: written in dark brown ink by one scribe.
Artist: probably Pietro da Pavia (a Boethius at Cesena, Biblioteca Malatestiana, MS D.XIV.1 has very similar decoration with identical oak leaf and acorn borders; Giuliana Algeri suggested an artist associated with Michelino da Besozzo or Pietro da Pavia; François Avril has agreed with Salmi's suggestion that it was a work of Michelino's youth; Kay Sutton firmly attributes it to Pietro. (See Dix siècles de enluminure italienne, 1984, p. 110; Giuliana Algeri, "Il De Consolatione Philosophiae della Biblioteca Malatestiana e la miniatura a Pavia alla fine del Trecento," in Libraria Domini: I manoscritti della Biblioteca Malatestiana: testi e decorazioni, Bologna, 1995, p. 323-37; Kay Sutton, "Giangaleazzo Visconti as Patron: A Prayerbook illuminated by Pietro da Pavia," Apollo CXXXVII (1993), p. 89-96)
Decoration: 1 full-page border with 2 historiated vignettes and droleries, 1 historiated initial (a teacher seated behind a desk on which are books, a candle and an hourglass) and 7 illuminated initials with vegetal and zoomorphic motifs, all with marginal vinescroll extenders, 2 marginal pen and ink drawings, one of a centaur-like creature.
Script
textura
Language
Latin
Century
Classification