A charming addition to the early career of Bonifacio Bembo interpreting the Late Gothic style in Lombardy

46 The Creation of Eve

Historiated initial ‘I’ on vellum on a cutting from a choirbook, illuminated by Bonifacio Bembo. Italy, Lombardy, c. 1445.

190 x 75 mm. Historiated initial cut out around the silhouette of the initial letter.Verso: 3 lines of musical notation in red. – Miniature in good condition, some rubbing to the gold and silver ground of the initial letter.

PROVENANCE: Private collection Europe.

TEXT: The initial ‘I’ in all likelihood opened the responsorium (“In principio fecit deus celum et terram…”) of an antiphonary.

ILLUMINATION: Judged by its precious rendering, this initial in the shape of a silver tabernacle on gold ground comes from what must have been an important choirbook. The style of this miniature (i.e. the figural style as well as certain ornamental characteristics such as the white patterns of delicate scrolling tendrils on blue ground) leaves no doubt that it belonged to a choirbook produced in the region of Lombardy, probably in Milan or Cremona. The slightly naïve doll-like appearance of the figures in this charming representation of the Creation of Eve, with their stylized rounded faces and round eyes, is a very characteristic trait in the artistic production of Bonifacio Bembo, to whom this miniature is to be attributed. Bonifacio Bembo, active between 1444 and 1477, was a very prolific artist, expert in various disciplines such as panel paintings, frescoes and wooden ceilings, but his fame was mainly due to his high ability as an illuminator. The two leading Milanese families, the Sforza and Visconti, count among the patrons to whose order Bonifacio worked. His style is rooted in the art of Michelino da Besozzo, but also influenced by the œuvre of Zavattari, and therefore took shape in the milieu of two of the most influential Lombard artists. Both were important figures in an artistic current which based its aesthetic principles on the Gothic world of courtly elegance. This taste for the linear dynamism of International Gothic finds its highest perfection in the art of Pisanello, the leading painter in Verona and Mantua.There is no doubt that it is to him that Bonifacio Bembo paid tribute when he illustrated the legend of Lancelot du Lac in a manuscript now in the Biblioteca Nazionale in Florence (ms. Palat. 566). This manuscript’s numerous charming drawings are directly inspired by Pisanello’s drawings and murals, such as the fresco cycle of the Gonzaga castle of Mantua, painted between 1436 and 1442, with scenes drawn from the legend of Arthur and the knights of the round table. They precede Bonifacio’s drawings of 1446 by just a couple of years.To the same early phase of Bonifacio’s career belong the tarrocchi cards now in the Pinacoteca di Brera in Milan (4982-5029), formerly in the Brambilla Collection and therefore known as the Brambilla Tarrocchi. To this group of works, and to the more or less contemporaneous panels originally on a ceiling in the palace of the Meli family in Cremona (Cremona, Museo Civico) which depict scenes of the creation of the world amongst others, our illumination shows the strongest stylistic ties. The doll-like figures are rendered in an extremely graphic manner and in slightly stiff poses, much in the same way as they are, for instance, in the scene of Adam giving names to the animals (exh. cat. Milan 1958, pl. 93a). In all the works so far cited we find the same artistic approach, which produced figures with a slightly naïve facial expression rendered in a very graphic manner, best seen in the treatment of the facial features and the hair which surrounds the faces in numerous twisted curls. These typical stylistic features of Bonifacio’s early career also characterise the Brambilla Tarrocchi (exh. cat. Milan 1988, pl. 18-19, pp. 178-181). His great expertise in the decoration of tarrocchi cards with their rich ornamental graffito patterns possibly inspired him also to apply extensive ornamental decoration to our initial ‘I’, which assumes the shape of a silver tabernacle scratched into the gold ground. There is little doubt that our initial as well as a very similarly drawn scene of Adam tempted by Eve on a panel once in the Wilczek Collection in Kreuzstein (Toesca 1912, p. 562, pl. 465) were created in the years around 1445 and hence belong to Bonifacio’s earliest artistic phase. This illumination, which in its rich use of tooled gold and silver ground is somewhat reminiscent of goldsmith’s work, is a delightful new find and addition to the œuvre of Bonifacio Bembo.

LITERATURE: The miniature is hitherto unpublished. Toesca 1912, p. 562, pl. 465; exh. cat. Milan 1958, pl. 93a; exh. cat. Milan 1988, pl. 18-19, pp. 178-181; Maggioni 2004, pp. 82-83 (with extensive bibliography).