The martyrdom of four apostles. Full page miniature from a 13th century illuminated manuscript on vellum c. 1230-40
The martyrdom of four apostles.
Item Number: 26852 Authenticity Guarantee
Category: Medieval manuscripts > Miniature
The beautiful miniature is divided into 4 compartments. (1) Upper left: St. James the Less holding a book in his hand and being clubbed across the head by a man with a staff. (2) Upper right: St. Bartolomeus stretched out on a table and being flayed alive by three butchers, the hands of angels in the sky swinging a censer. (3) Lower left: St. John the Evangelist being boiled in a wooden vat of oil as he is mocked by three men, one wearing a Jewish hat, architectural canopies above. (4) Lower right: St. Thomas the apostle being lanced by a soldier in chain mail as another man shakes his fist at the martyr.
All painted in colours against a burnished gold ground, compartments divided by multiple frames in colours and gothic tracery, a church and a row of buildings with lancet windows and tiled roofs, above the upper frame (perhaps representing Heaven), verso (probably originally the recto) blank except for a partial offset along of the upper margin of one line in gothic minuscule including the wordd 'libertate', the miniature rubbed, the extensions in upper margin slightly cropped, right-hand margin defective and restored with a strip of another manuscript painted gold.
Date: c. 1230-40
Size: 18 x 14cm (6.9 x 5.3 inches)
The miniature resembles the multiple compartments of a gothic stained glass window. It perhaps comes from a cycle of pictures prefixing a Psalter or from some devotional volume based on the lives and miracles of saints.
Provenance: Ferrini and Fogg, Medieval & Renaissance Miniature Painting, 1989. Coll. Neil F. Phillips.