HYMNARY Hymnary, use of Cesena.

A sumptuously illuminated hymnary made for Cesena Cathedral, in an elaborate contemporary binding.

The present, impressive manuscript is kept in a vast Italian contemporary binding over wooden boards with elaborate metal work and covered with polished brown leather, probably made in a Cesena workshop. The metal corner pieces and a central plate in the shape of a rosette, are covered with various punches and pierced bass bosses, completed by large thorns on the edges. the corners of the front board each with a projecting six-sided boss with a perforated flower-shaped base, set on top of a flat ornamental piece stamped with an oval ‘maria’ tool, circular tools enclosing a Madonna and Child, an ‘IHS’ monogram surrounded by a sunburst (symbol of San Bernardino), and a flower, and small rectangular tools with a Paschal Lamb and ‘ave’; the centrepiece in a flower-shape with alternating ‘IHS’ and Madonna and Child stamps; the corners of the lower board with the same projecting bosses set on a flatter panels, without blind-stamped tools and instead with raised circles and vesicas; the leather rough and cracked in places and with minor restorations (see De Marinis, 1960). These kinds of huge bindings were obviously made to protect the books while there were used in the mass or stored in the churches, often accessible to the public.

The codex comprises a Hymnary or Hymnals, which contains the metrical hymns for the Mass, arranged according to the liturgical year.

Text

ff. 1-63                   Hymns for the Sundays of the year: (f. 1) rubric: In dominicus diebus from the Octave of Epiphany to the first Sunday in Lent, from the beginning of October until Advent, from the first Sunday after Pentecost until the beginning of October, etc.

ff. 63-137              Hymns for the major feasts of the Temporale, including: Christmas Eve, Epiphany, Sundays in Lent, Passion Saturday, Ascension, etc.

ff. 137-186             Hymns for the saints: (f. 139v) Conversion of St Paul, (f. 141) St Peter’s Chair, (f. 150) SS. Peter and Paul, (f. 151) Mary Magdalene, a leaf with the start of the feast of John the Baptist missing after f.142, (f.160v) St. Severus, etc., lacking a leaf with the beginning of the feast of the Annunciation (f.185 beginning imperfectly in the hymn Ave maris stella dei)

ff. 186-233            Commune Sanctorum: f. 202 (rubric on f.201; f.201v blank); the Dedication of a Church, f. 218v, ending imperfectly

Illumination

The manuscript starts with a lavishly decorated frontispiece for the Sundays of the year, painted by the first artist, whose palette is dominated by purple, green, and blue. We encounter here a large historiated initial P showing God the Father in a mandorla, in front of a verdant, hilly landscape. The figure of God has a somewhat youthful appearance, despite a very lush beard, and his draperies are executed in a very painterly manner, using tonal variation rather than line to convey its dense folds; he is set in a charmingly naïve landscape, with a series of ice-cream cone hills and castles in the middle distance. The full, colourful border decoration includes a large medallion at the central bottom margin with a gold leaf frame filled with mauve and blue alternating foliate panels presenting John the Baptist holding a banderol that reads: ECCE AG[N]US DEI. In the upper-centre margin a bishop is depicted in a green, foliated rondel, probably St. Severus.

The rest of the manuscript is decorated by a second, main illuminator, who more clearly outlined his figures and who chose entirely cooler colours. He designed the large historiated initials, exemplified by the St. Severus initial (f. 160v). Here the saint wears a rather two-dimensional cope and mitre against an abstract two-dimensional background, but his face is rendered with remarkable subtlety, with wrinkles around the eyes and touches of white stubble around the chin and upper lip.

Beatrice Alai attributes to this second illuminator the opening initial in a Psalter from Cesena cathedral, probably written in 1475 for its bishop, Giovanni Venturelli (Beatrice Alai, ‘“Un salterio con due sole pagine miniate”: un manoscritto ritrovato della serie liturgica quattrocentesca per il duomo di Cesena e due documenti inediti di fine Ottocento’, Studi romagnoli, 67 (2016), pp. 591-631, at pp. 597-99, and col. ills. 4-6).

This main illuminator of the manuscript probably belonged to those close to the Ferrarese illuminator Guglielmo Giraldi (d. c. 1480), who was strongly influenced by Piero della Francesca and who fundamentally shaped the art of 15^th-century book illumination in Ferrara. The miniatures in two psalteries for the cathedral of Ferrara, dating 1471-72 (Biblioteca del Duomo) can be counted among his main works. He seems to have spent his last years at the court of the Duke of Urbino.

Miniatures

f.1           Initial (P)rimo dierum: The First Day: God seated in a mandorla, holding an orb and sceptre topped with a fleur-de-lys, in a landscape. With a full border, incorporating a half-length bishop-saint (St. Severus?) in a white robe and mauve cape in the upper border; naked boys and rabbits in the fore-edge border, and St. John the Baptist (to whom Cesena Cathedral is dedicated) in a landscape in the lower border. The border decoration includes putti, rabbits, birds, and hybrid creatures.

 f. 114      Initial (V)eni creator spiritus: Pentecost: God in heaven leans down towards a crown of apostles, of whom one in the foreground is sleeping. The rest of the leaf with full, foliate borders, in red, mauve, green, and blue with gold leaf. The lower border with a blank space for an armorial shield supported by putti.

 f. 160v    Initial (S)everi sacri presulis: St. Severus, three-quarter length, in ecclesiastical vestments and mitre, holding a crosier and book. Initial in mauve set into gold leaf frame with green and red leaves twisting into the upper and left borders.

 f. 177v    Initial (G)aude mater: The Transfiguration, with Christ displaying his wounds, watched by St. Peter, and two other apostles who have fallen to the ground in astonishment. The initial G in mauve with blue, green, and mauve leaves twisting into upper and down left border, with spiky bezants in gold and colours.   

 Provenance

1. Italy, Cesena Cathedral, made c. 1480.

2. Joseph Baer & Co, Frankfurt am Main, several times from 1923 to 1926, including Katalog 698: Illustrierte Bücher: vom XIII. bis zum XVI. Jahrhundert, I [1924], no. 149 and pls. II-IV, attributed to Guglielmo Giraldi and described as “manuscrit de premier ordre avec de magnifiques miniatures de l’école miniaturiste Ferraraise, qui était une des plus célèbres en Italie à cette époque”; also Katalog 691 (1923), no. 1175; Katalog 706 (1924), no. 753; and Katalog 727 (1926), no. 626.

 3. Dr. Jörn Günther Antiquariat, Katalog 3: Mittelalterliche Handschriften und Miniaturen

(Hamburg, 1995), no. 19 (col. ills.), sold in 2006

4. Europe, private collection.

The imposing and elaborate book cover encompasses a Hymnary with the liturgical hymns and chants for mass, that was made for the use in the cathedral of Cesena. This is clearly indicated by the rubric In festo sancti seueri cesene episcopi et confessoris (f. 160) with the accompanying historiated initial of St. Severus, 4^th-century Bishop of Ravenna, in whose archdiocese Cesena lay (f. 160v). Furthermore, St. John the Baptist, patron of both the cathedral and city of Cesena, is shown in a medallion in the border on the opening leaf of the manuscript (f. 1).

Cesena, diocesan town in the Romagna and suffragan of Ravenna, owes its importance mainly to the house of Malatesta, which was, among others, related by marriage to the counts of Montefeltro and Carpegna. Francesco Petrarca stayed at their court in the 14^th century, and Domenico Malatesta ‘Novello’ (1418-65) founded the famous Biblioteca Malatestiana, a centre of humanistic book culture. A new set of choirbooks was commissioned for the cathedral by Giovanni Venturelli, who was bishop from 1475 until his death in 1486; one of them is signed and dated by its scribe, Henricus of Amsterdam, in 1486 (The colophon is reproduced in Piero Lucchi, ed., Corali miniati del Quattrocento nella Biblioteca Malatestiana, Milan 1989, p. 92). Some of the set (which was not completed until after Venturelli’s death) are still at Cesena in the Biblioteca Malatestiana, but others were alienated as long ago as c. 1685, when the bishop, Vincenzo Maria Orsini (1680-1686) ordered Canon Tommaso Rossi da Cesena ‘to sell the ancient and beautiful choir books, once of the cathedral’ to finance the restoration of the cathedral (Alai 2016, p. 593) and as recently as 1953 the Cathedral sold two more choirbooks (with the permission of the Soprintendenza), again to raise funds for cathedral repairs (Alai 2016, p. 599). Seven of originally eight choir books of the cathedral of Cesena are still preserved in the Biblioteca Malatestiana; the volume which is missing should be a Hymnary, however, the group of choir books differs in size and execution from the present manuscript.

Literature

Illustrierte Bücher: vom XIII. bis zum XVI. Jahrhundert (Nr. 698): Italien, Frankreich, Spanien und Portugal. Frankfurt a M.: Joseph Baer & Co., 1924, no. 149.

Dr. Jörn Günther Antiquariat. Mittelalterliche Handschriften und Miniaturen, Katalog 3. Hamburg 1995, no. 19.

Dr. Jörn Günther Antiquariat. Blicke in verborgene Schatzkammern. Hamburg 1998, no. 51.

Dr. Jörn Günther Antiquariat. The Art of the Book from the Early Middle Ages to the Renaissance: A Journey Through a Thousand Years. Boston 2000, no. 48.

Marinis, Tammaro de. La legatura artistica in Italia nei secoli XV e XVI. Florence, 1960, no. 1421, pl. CCXLVI; vol. 2, 32 (binding).

Further reading:

Alai, Beatrice. ‘“Un salterio con due sole pagine miniate”: un manoscritto ritrovato della serie liturgica quattrocentesca per il duomo di Cesena e due documenti inediti di fine Ottocento.” Studi romagnoli 67 (2016), pp. 591-631, esp. pp. 597-99, and col. ills. 4-6.

Lollini, Fabrizio. “Alcune miniature dai codici della biblioteca di Giovanni di Marco.” In Sanit. e societ. a Cesena 1297-1997, ed. by S. Arieti et al. Cesena 1999, pp. 435-55, esp. 453, 455.

–––. “Maestri dei Corali di Cesena.” Dizionario biografico dei miniatori italiani: secoli IX-XVI, ed. by Milvia Bollati. Milan, 2004, pp. 411-12, esp. 412.

Lucchi, Piero, ed. Corali miniati del Quattrocento nella Biblioteca Malatestiana (Milan, 1989).

EXHIBITED

Museum für Kunst und Gewerbe, Hamburg, June–July 1998: Blicke in verborgene Schatzkammern:

Mittelalterliche Handschriften und Miniaturen aus Hamburger Sammlungen (Hamburg, 1998), no. 51 (col. ill.; ‘Privatbesitz’)

John J. Burns Library, Boston College, Boston, October–November 2000: The Art of the Book from the Early Middle Ages to the Renaissance: A Journey Through a Thousand Years (Boston, 2000), no. 48 (col. ill.).