Santa Maria degli Angeli

Don Silvestro dei Gherarducci (1339-1399)

Gradual de Santa Maria degli Angeli

Presentation in the Temple , Historiated initial S from a Gradual,

About: 1370-1375 , Choir Book

Period: Pre-Renaissance

Tempera and Gold on parchment 18.9 x 17.4 cm

Fitzwilliam Museum , Cambridge, United Kingdom

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Whilst discussing the life and work of the painter-monk Lorenzo Monaco, Giorgio Vasari, the fifteenth-century writer on art, praises twenty choir books produced in the Florentine monastery of Santa Maria degli Angeli:

‘I, who have seen them many times, am lost in astonishment that they should have been executed with such good design and with so much diligence at a time when all the arts of design were little better than lost …’

He singles out for particular praise a scribe, Don Jacopo, and an illuminator, Don Silvestro, whose right hands were venerated as relics in the monastery after their deaths. The illumination here is thought to be the work of Don Silvestro’s revered fingers.

Choir books needed to be big, so that a single copy could be viewed by a group of singers. Large pages provided room for large pictures, and many finely illuminated choir books were cut up by art dealers and collectors in the nineteenth century. This painting is taken from the second volume of the series that had so impressed Vasari.

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