![MARTYRDOM OF ST PETER MARTYR, initial 'P' cut from a choirbook illuminated by Niccolò di Giacomo da Bologna [Bologna c.1370]](https://www.christies.com/img/LotImages/2018/CKS/2018_CKS_16018_0014_000(martyrdom_of_st_peter_martyr_initial_p_cut_from_a_choirbook_illuminate084129).jpg?w=1)
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MARTYRDOM OF ST PETER MARTYR, initial 'P' cut from a choirbook illuminated by Niccolò di Giacomo da Bologna [Bologna c.1370]
This dramatic and expressive scene is a demonstration of what made Niccolò one of the greatest Italian illuminators of the Trecento; it combines his fine rendering of detail with a strong narrative awareness.
158 x 120mm overall, the initial likely opening the introit, 'Protexisti me deus', to the Mass for the feast of the Saint in a Gradual for the use of a Dominican choir, verso with two lines of text and music on a four-line stave.
Peter of Verona (1206-1252) was a celebrated Dominican friar commended for his preaching and his orthodoxy. In 1251 Pope Innocent IV appointed him Inquisitor in Lombardy. The following year, as a consequence of his success in bringing heretics back into the orthodox fold, a group of Milanese Cathars hired an assassin to kill him. As Peter and a fellow friar returned to Milan from Como he was attacked with a blow to the head. In this initial the assassin strikes a further blow and the horrified and fearful reaction of Peter’s companion anticipates his own mortal injury. Peter was canonised within 11 months of his death.
Niccolò’s work is identified around the Antiphonal leaf in Los Angeles with the inscription ‘Ego Nicholau[s] d[e] Bononia feci’ (LACMA, M.75.3). He was arguably the leading illuminator in Bologna at a time when the city was a major centre of manuscript production. He was called upon to embellish manuscripts for a wide variety of private, church and civic patrons. Like the Antiphonal to which the Los Angeles leaf belonged, the present initial clearly came from a choirbook destined for a Dominican church. Niccolò undertook commissions for several Dominican convents, quite often for female houses.
This dramatic and expressive scene is a demonstration of what made Niccolò one of the greatest Italian illuminators of the Trecento; it combines his fine rendering of detail with a strong narrative awareness.
158 x 120mm overall, the initial likely opening the introit, 'Protexisti me deus', to the Mass for the feast of the Saint in a Gradual for the use of a Dominican choir, verso with two lines of text and music on a four-line stave.
Peter of Verona (1206-1252) was a celebrated Dominican friar commended for his preaching and his orthodoxy. In 1251 Pope Innocent IV appointed him Inquisitor in Lombardy. The following year, as a consequence of his success in bringing heretics back into the orthodox fold, a group of Milanese Cathars hired an assassin to kill him. As Peter and a fellow friar returned to Milan from Como he was attacked with a blow to the head. In this initial the assassin strikes a further blow and the horrified and fearful reaction of Peter’s companion anticipates his own mortal injury. Peter was canonised within 11 months of his death.
Niccolò’s work is identified around the Antiphonal leaf in Los Angeles with the inscription ‘Ego Nicholau[s] d[e] Bononia feci’ (LACMA, M.75.3). He was arguably the leading illuminator in Bologna at a time when the city was a major centre of manuscript production. He was called upon to embellish manuscripts for a wide variety of private, church and civic patrons. Like the Antiphonal to which the Los Angeles leaf belonged, the present initial clearly came from a choirbook destined for a Dominican church. Niccolò undertook commissions for several Dominican convents, quite often for female houses.
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