Initial "M" with Saints James and Andrew(?)

Artist Don Silvestro dei Gherarducci (Italian, 1339 - 1399)

Dateca. 1380

MediumAntiphonary leaf; Tempera and gold leaf on vellum

DimensionsUnframed: 12 3/8 x 15 11/16 inches (31.43 x 39.85 cm)
Framed: 20 x 26 inches (50.8 x 66.04 cm)

Credit LinePurchase: acquired through the bequest of Ida C. Robinson

Object numberF61-14

On View

Not on view

Collections

European Art

Terms

Exhibition History

Dürer to Matisse: Master Drawings from the Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art, The Philbrook Museum of Art, Tulsa, OK, June 23-August 18, 1996; The Cummer Museum and Gardens, Jacksonville, FL, September 20-November 29, 1996; The Hood Museum of Art, Dartmouth College, Hanover, NH, December 21, 1996-March 2, 1997, hors cat., as Initial “M” with Saints James and Andrew (?).

Dürer to Matisse: Master Drawings from the Permanent Collection, The Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art, Kansas City, MO, July 12-September 6, 1998, no cat., as Initial “M” with Saints James and Andrew (?).

The Treasury: The Splendor of Liturgical Objects, The Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art, Kansas City, MO, August 25, 2010-February 24, 2011, no cat., as Initial “M” with Saints James and Andrew (?).

Gallery Label

Don Silvestro dei Gherarducci is one of the best-known illuminators of late-14th-century Florence. The present initial "M" was cut from a page of music notation in one of a series of choir books made for the Florentine church of Santa Maria degli Angeli, where the artist lived and worked as a monk of the Camaldolese order. The flowery, leafy patterns and the integration of figures within the decorative ensemble are typical of the late-Gothic period. When acquired by the Museum, the artist's name was inscribed in the background, but since conservators determined it had been added much later, it was removed.

Provenance

Purchased from Richard H. Zinser, New York, through the bequest of Ida C. Robinson, by The Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art, Kansas City, MO, 1961.

Published References

Roger Ward and Patricia J. Fidler, eds., The Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art: A Handbook of the Collection (New York: Hudson Hills Press, in association with Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art, 1993), 26, 137, (repro.), as attributed to Don Silvestro dei Gherarducci, as Initial “M” with Saints James and Andrew (?).

Deborah Emont Scott, ed., The Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art: A Handbook of the Collection, 7th ed. (Kansas City, MO: Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art, 2008), 41, (repro.), as attributed to Don Silvestro dei Gherarducci, as Initial “M” with Saints James and Andrew (?).

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