Lot 17: Attavante degli Attavanti (1452-1520/25) - Sts Sergius and Bacchus, initial 'A' cut from a choirbook on vellum, Florence, c.1475-85

Attavante degli Attavanti (1452-1520/25)
Sts Sergius and Bacchus, initial 'A' cut from a choirbook on vellum, Florence, c.1475-85

A sparkling and rare miniature illuminated by Vante di Gabriello di Vante Attavanti, also known as Attavante degli Attavanti, ‘the most famous and most representative artist of Italian miniature painting’.

150 x c.130mm. The initial ‘A’ from a choirbook depicting the martyr saints Sergius and Bacchus, both Roman soldiers, in fantastic Renaissance armour, opens the Feast of Sts Sergius and Bacchus (7 October), probably for the antiphon 'A[bsterget deus].' The reverse with fragments of two lines of music notation on four-line staves in red, with text in brown ink: '[n]ostris [concedat v]obis salutem,' from the antiphon 'Adaperiat dominus cor vestrum', for Saturdays preceding the first Sunday of October. Under a faint yellow wash to the left of both figures is a partially legible inscription: 'Cu[m] fi[...],” perhaps 'Cum figuris' ('with figures'), a rare example of instructions to the illuminator. Mounted and framed.

Illumination:
‘The most famous and most representative artist of Italian miniature painting’ (M. Bollati, Dizionario Biografico dei Miniatori Italiani, 2004, pp.975-979), Attavante’s elegant, expressive style was influenced by the work of Domenico Ghirlandaio and Antonio Pollaiuolo. He had a predilection for idealised, classicising compositions rooted in Antique sources, and the present miniature is an outstanding example of this. His first recorded work, dated 1483, is a Missal produced for Thomas James, bishop of Dol-de-Bretagne. Attavante would go on to produce several manuscripts for Matthias Corvinus, King of Hungary, and for the Medici family, including Pope Leo X (Giovanni di Lorenzo de' Medici), a notable patron of the arts under whose reign significant progress was made in the rebuilding of St Peter’s Basilica and the redevelopment of the Vatican rooms. Attavante worked on commissions with the most important illuminators and painters in Florence: Francesco di Antonio del Chierico, the brothers Gherardo and Monte di Giovanni di Miniato del Foro, and Domenico Ghirlandaio. Relatively early in his career, around 1473, Attavante collaborated with the latter on a choirbook, the miniatures of which are now in an album in Rome (BAV, Cod. Ross. 1192). There, Roman soldiers in armour and helmets appear in the background of a miniature with the Finding of the True Cross (f.22), a scene that bears significant parallels to the present miniature. Also comparable are the miniatures attributed to Attavante in the Bible of Federico Montefeltro (Rome, BAV, Cod. Urb. Lat. 1-2), dated between 1476 and 1478, and miniatures in the Missal of Thomas James, illuminated around 1483 (Lyon, BM, MS 5123).