A remarkable synthesis of Italian and French illumination associated with the papal court in Avignon

39 Funeral mass for a dignitary

Miniature cut from a breviary on vellum. France, Avignon, c. 1340-45.

240 x 160 mm. – Illumination in colours and burnished gold. Bar border of alternately blue and pink oblong squares filled with white penwork decoration in the form of lozenges.

PROVENANCE: Strölin Collection, Lausanne. TEXT: There is no text on the reverse of the leaf. The full-page miniature must have been placed on a verso facing the beginning of the Office of the Dead in a breviary.

ILLUMINATION: This miniature, created shortly before the middle of the 14th century, is a fascinating specimen of the French Gothic. With his distinctive figure style the anonymous miniaturist apparently aimed at a fusion of Italian painting in the tradition of Simone Martini and the tendencies cultivated in France. The subject matter, a funeral mass, presumably for a high ecclesiastical dignitary, is depicted with an expressiveness hardly found in contemporary French illumination. Slender, elongated figures of clerics and mourners have gathered in a semi-circle around a catafalque, rendered in foreshortened view and covered with a precious cloth. Close attention is paid to a detailed depiction of the clerical utensils. Although the figures with their linear drapery folds and almond-shaped eyes are indicative of a French origin, the extraordinary sensitivity with which the artist has captured a wide range of emotions is rather to be found in Tuscan art. The precise spatial composition of the miniature, in which the chapel where the scene is set appears as a stage, is another element that clearly reveals the influence of Italian models. The illumination at hand therefore presents a highly interesting synthesis of Italian stimuli and French figure style. The papal court in Avignon which attracted Italian and southern French artists alike prepared the ground for such a combination of artistic trends. From 1336 until his death in 1344 the Sienese Simone Martini worked in Avignon in the sphere of Cardinal Jacopo Stefaneschi. It is in this phase of his career that he executed his only work in the field of manuscript illumination, the frontispiece of the Virgil edition of his friend Petrarch, likewise residing in Avignon at that time (Milan, Biblioteca Ambrosiana, ms. S. P. 10/27). Throughout the 14th century no other painter applied such love of detail and sense of naturalism to the portrayal of both narrative settings and figures as did Simone Martini. This extraordinary talent is especially evident in his early fresco cycle of the life and legend of St Martin in the chapel dedicated to this saint in the Lower Church of S. Francesco in Assisi. These frescoes come to mind when looking at the group of mourners assembled around the catafalque with their various degrees of grief and sorrow and their animated gestures. It is the interaction between the figures that constitutes a particular fascination of the leaf at hand.The celebrating bishop and the young acolyte are an impressive example of this interplay: the acolyte stretches out his arm and reverently gives the high dignitary his hand while the clasp of the book the cleric is holding touches his forehead. Such refinement and sophistication were restricted in European art at that time to the best Italian painters, Giotto and especially to Simone Martini and – as far as manuscript illumination is concerned – to the Master of the St Gregory Codex, who illuminated a series of manuscripts for Cardinal Jacopo Stefaneschi that rank among the highlights of 14th-century Italian manuscript painting. This is the artistic milieu of the present miniature, the only hitherto known leaf from a dismembered breviary. Elements supporting a provenance in the sphere of the high clergy at the papal court include the abundant use of burnished gold and the detail of a bishop performing the mass. The white robes of the deacons and the black cloaks of some of the mourners may point to the Celestines with whom the cardinal was also in close contact.There is not much plausibility in the assumption that the cardinal chose to include a miniature of his own funeral mass in his breviary. One could conceive, however, a more general representation of a funeral mass to be integrated in the cardinal’s service book used for the celebration of the divine office. If we follow this thesis our miniature would be an expression of Cardinal Jacopo Stefaneschi’s affiliation with the order of the deacons, of which he himself was a member, as well as with the Benedictine branch of the Celestines, which he held in high esteem. Even if the cardinal’s patronage cannot be established with certainty, his death in 1343 may serve as a point of reference for the approximate date of creation of the parent manuscript. With the rediscovery of the miniature at hand art history has retrieved an important and for the time being unique testimony of French manuscript illumination which illustrates the tendencies of the production at the papal court in Avignon around 1340-45. Astonishingly enough Simone Martini’s impact on contemporary French illumination, which at this time had not yet come into full effect, nowhere unfolds more clearly than in the small-scale painting on vellum presented here.

LITERATURE: The miniature is hitherto unpublished. Ciardi Dupré dal Poggetto 1981; Boskovits 1984, pp. 34-44, 192-219; exh. cat. New York 1994, pp. 84-105; exh. cat.Turin 1996; exh. cat. Rome 2000, pp. 103-11, 150-151; Freuler 2004, pp. 943-945.