Beschreibung:

MEMMO DI FILIPPUCCIO, artist . The Resurrection. Historiated initial D from a LARGE-FORMAT ILLUMINATED CHOIRBOOK ON VELLUM. [Siena, ca. 1314-15]. 222 x 217 mm. (8 5/8 x 8 1/2 in.); miniature in colors and burnished gold, depicting the risen Christ emerging from a marble sarcophagus inlaid with carved panels and colored marbles, on the right two sleeping figures, one clothed in orange, the other in blue and wearing a chain mail helmet, on the left a bald, bearded sleeping figure clothed in green and blue, beside him a discarded hauberk, shield and helmet, the whole against a background of deep blue sky flanked by bare brown hills, each hill growing a single tree, one with red, one with brownish fruits; all within an initial D in two shades of red with white tracery and blue ornaments, inside a square green frame, the corners filled in dark blue with white tracery; on the verso, parts of four lines of music (square black neumes on four-line red staves), accompanied by text in rotunda script. Some rubbing and flaking of pigment, the sky, one tree and possibly the hauberk partially repainted, the top of the uncial D partly trimmed away, formerly pasted to a stiff card backing, now largely detached, traces of glue on the verso . Memmo di Filippuccio, member of a notable family of artists in Siena, is credited with the illumination of manuscript graduals preserved in Siena and Pisa and with an antiphonal, dated 1302, for the church of S. Stefano in Pane in Florence. From 1303 until 1310 or later he worked in S. Gimignano as "pittore civico" but apparently also maintained a workshop in Siena, where his presence is attested in the 1320s. The present miniature, which can be dated c. 1314-15, is remarkable for the frontal presentation of Christ, with the vexilla in his right hand, in the act of climbing out of the elaborate sarcophagus. Though formally attributed to the workshop of Memmo di Filippo Memmi (C. De Benedictis, "Miniature senese del primo Trecento", Prospettiva , no. 14, 1978, fig. 17), its fully autograph stature has been vindicated. (E. Carli, "Risurrezioni a Siena," Antichità viva , vol. 29, no. 5, 1990, pp. 5-17). The Resurrection as the subject of an historiated initial is most commonly found in the R of Resurrexi , the introit of the Mass for Easter Sunday. However, the text on the verso of the present cutting comes from the first and second antiphons and the first Psalm ( Beatus vir ) for Matins of Easter Day. In the post-Tridentine Roman breviary, the invitatory for this office is Surrexit dominus vere ; it is probable therefore that the present initial D comes from an antiphonal in which this text was given with the inverted word order Dominus surrexit vere .