Arms, A Saint and 'Inperial sedendo fra più stelle': The Illuminator of Mod A

Abstract

Some 600 years ago a north Italian illuminator sat decorating the parchment leaves of a collection of mainly French-texted polyphonic songs. His task was to provide a decorated initial for each song, motet, or piece of sacred music using gold leaf with red, green, blue, and rose-pink paints. He responded to certain texts by adorning their margins with small, often entertaining images of people or animals that art historians call drolleries. In the margin of Jacob de Senleches's 'En ce gracieux temps', in which the poet recalls the nightingale's song interrupted by the raucous call of the cuckoo, our illuminator painted two birds. For another song, in which the poet pledges to serve "Love" and honor his beloved, he painted a little cupid. Elsewhere, the connections between song texts and our illuminator's figures are more symbolic. For Egidius's 'Franchois sunt nobles' he painted his only historiated initial showing Jubal or Tubalcain listening intently to the sounds that a pair of proportionally weighted hammers produced when struck on an anvil. Although it might relate to the song's call for the French nation to rule through its noble character, I believe he intended this well-known allegory for the biblical invention of music to appear at the very start of the manuscript as it was originally conceived. Below the initial at the beginning of Egardus's Gloria, he also painted a haloed saint in Franciscan habit carrying lilies to represent Saint Anthony of Padua. He paid special attention to 'Inperial sedendo fra più stelle'. In the margin of this ceremonial madrigal he painted the gold-winged Saracen crest employed by the Carrara lords of Padua. When it came to the initial "I" for this song, he was more cryptic, painting in it a group of seven stars on a midnight-blue background.