III.5. Renaissance Liturgical Books

The following eight exquisitely decorated books were all made for use in churches and monasteries, commissioned primarily by or for highly placed clergy. A second contradictory aspect of liturgical manuscripts in this period is that many were written and illuminated by hand after the invention of printing had been firmly established in Italy, 2 thus confirming that manuscripts could more readily be adapted than printed editions to meet specific liturgical preferences of individual religious establishments.

The following chapter includes examples of most of the essential liturgical texts used in the Renaissance. These books tend to be large, so that they could be more easily seen when opened on altars or high lecterns. 3 The Holy Eucharist, or the Mass, was the most solemn service in Christian churches—requiring the celebrant to perform self-purification beforehand (cat. no. 22l)—and the necessary texts appear in missals. 4 The prayer of consecration, known as the canon of the Mass, is central to the Eucharist and in illuminated missals was usually preceded by an image of the Crucifixion; the first words of the canon are Te igitur, and the initial T was often historiated with an image of a priest celebrating Mass (cat. nos. 78 and 242). 5 Complementing the missal is the gradual, the liturgical book containing the musical chants sung at Masses throughout the year. Choir book commissions were often so elaborate that more than one miniaturist worked to complete them. For example, Wellesley Colleges Durant Gradual was extensively illuminated in Venice in the 1430s by two principal miniaturists (cat. no. 224). In its cycle illustrating the Christo- logical feasts, the Pentecost was illuminated by the Master of the Donato Commission with the Dove of the Holy Spirit hovering over a crowd of apostles and the Virgin Mary. 6 A second artist, now called the Wellesley Master, depicted the Resurrected Christ standing on his tomb on a splendid page initiating the chants for Easter (cat. no. 224, f. 189r).

The cycle of eight services known as the Divine Office, which was recited daily in monastic institutions, also required specialized books: the breviary for the texts and the antiphonal and psalter ( psalterium ) for the musical chants. A breviary illuminated in Venice or Padua by a miniaturist known as Petrus V—, is one of the most spectacular Renaissance manuscripts in America (cat. no. 223). The imagery at the opening of its psalter does reverently portray Ring David in prayer, but the glittering gold architectural border and the illusionism of the “torn” vellum page seems to appeal to a patron with sophisticated knowledge of the art of classical antiquity.

Cathedrals and prosperous monastic institutions commissioned elaborate sets of graduals and antiphonals. The exhibition includes two choir books, an antiphonal and a psalter, that are among fourteen surviving from the Benedictine monastery of San Sisto, Piacenza (cat. nos. 225-26). In the antiphonal, a delicately rendered Annunciation inhabits the initialM of Missus est Gabriel, the chant for vespers before the First Sunday in Advent. The familiar scene is appropriately used to initiate the Christological cycle in this temporale, whereas the same iconography was often used in a sanctorale to illustrate the Feast of the Annunciation (March 25). The frontispiece of the psalter is even more richly decorated: in the initial B of Beatus vir (psalm l) are David the Psalmist and below him St. Jerome in his study, signaling the monks’ knowledge of Jerome's commentaries on the Psalms (cat. no. 226, f. lr, see opposite). In the complex border are portraits of St. Benedict, founder of the order, and many other saints revered by the monks of San Sisto. Elsewhere in the psalter, the monks of San Sisto themselves—most interestingly an African monk and another carrying a banderole with his name, Frater Ambrosius—are portrayed instead of more usual images of prophets or saints (cat. no. 225, ff. 6r and lOr). The persistence of manuscript choir books even into the seventeenth century is verified in a huge antiphonal recently recognized as one of eleven choir books made for the Dominican convent of Santa Maria dell'Arco at Sant Anastasia near Naples soon after 1600 (cat. no. 227). 7 For the Feast of the Conversion of St. Paul (January 25), the miniaturist has portrayed the saint collapsed by his horse, shielding his face from the vision of Christ in the clouds above.

Special Masses and other ceremonies that would only be celebrated by a bishop are contained in manuscripts known as pontificals. In the richly illustrated “Calderini Pontifical,” a bishop is charmingly depicted blessing cheese, milk, and honey; and in another initial, he blesses grapes on the Feast of the Transfiguration (cat. no. 220, ff. 32v-33r). The miniature in a second pontifical shows a bishop blessing a queen at her coronation (cat. no. 222, f. 125v). The margins are further decorated with exquisite vari-colored penwork leaves and birds, having no necessary relationship to the text, but greatly enhancing the beauty of the page.