Miniatori napoletani e dell'Italia centrale nei frammenti di corali certosini del XIV secolo raccolti da Vittorio Giovardi

• Autores: Francesca Manzari
• Localización: Rivista di storia della miniatura, ISSN 1126-4772, Nº. 14, 2010, págs. 116-138
• Idioma: italiano
• Texto completo no disponible (Saber más ...)
• Resumen

  • This article examines a collection of detached illuminated leaves, which, besides documenting an early example of miniature collecting, sheds light on four little known ateliers, active in Naples at the middle of the l4th century.

    It is suggested that the two liturgical series from which the leaves were detached – a Gradual (ff. 1-13) and an Antiphonary (ff. 14-38) – were originally made for the Chartreuse of St Martin in Naples.

    The large illuminated initials from the Gradual can be assigned to two different Neapolitan workshops, also active jointly in two other manuscripts datable to the 1360s. The head of one of these two ateliers was an illuminator trained in the workshop of Cristoforo Orimina, working as an independent artist both in the Veroli leaves and in the Vienna Book of Hours. An illuminated leaf with the Resurrection, now in Venice, can be assigned to this artist and it is extremely likely that it was detached from the same Gradual as the Veroli leaves. The other workshop was led by the author of the full-page Crucifixion in the Avignon Missal. Rubrics indicate the Carthusian use of this liturgical book and the emphasis on St. Martin suggests that the Gradual was made for the Neapolitan Chartreuse, perhaps in the years before the inauguration ceremony, held in 1368 in the presence of the archbishop Bemard de Bosquet, connected to the Avignon Missal, and the queen Jeanne of Anjou, who systematically financed the building of the Chartreuse, founded by her father Charles of Calabria.

    The Antiphonary was certainly illuminated at an earlier date and it is likely to have been made for the same destination. The two workshops active in it seemed to work in parallel, as with the other two ateliers, but these illuminated leaves must be dated to the first half of the century. One of the two groups is composed of Central Italian artists, very close to Umbrian mid-14th century art, and possibly coming from that area. The other illuminations from the Antiphonary are by a single artist, whose origins can be traced to the Abruzzi. We may further assign to this artist part of a manuscript, presumably also made in Naples for the Anjevin court (Casanatense, ms. 970). If the Antiphonary was also made for St. Martin, it is possible that it dates from the early 1340s, when Jeanne took up the patronage of the completion of the Charterhouse.

    Both series were eventually sent to Rome, presumably in the late 16th century. The leaves bear notes made in the Roman Chartreuse of S. Maria degli Angeli, from which they were taken, to be put on sale, together with two small portions of 16th century choir books from the same Charterhouse.