Splendors of the Serenissima in a Digital Age: The Master of the Murano Gradual Reconsidered

Abstract

The Master of the Murano Gradual is one of the most enigmatic illuminators working in early fifteenth-century Venice. The eponymous choir books were commissioned by the Camaldolese monastery of San Mattia a Murano and today comprise a single intact volume in the Kupferstichkabinett in Berlin (MS 78 F.1) and about fifty historiated initials dispersed in twenty-five public and private collections in Europe and the United States. The fragmentary nature of the overall corpus is a central challenge to studying the artist and to understanding the contours of the workshop. This article provides a reassessment of the corpus of work attributed to the Murano Master—including an appendix with provenances of the whereabouts of the series—and makes a case for future collaborations that can build upon digitization efforts that make the fragments available online and upon recent technical analysis into the pigments used by the illuminators.

The methodological approach of the authors has been twofold. Firstly, to study each of the fragments and manuscripts in person, and to locate digital assets for as many works as possible with the aim of creating an eventual website or online repository for scholars to consult. Secondly, to investigate codicological features of the individual fragments that have been hitherto overlooked, including the measurement of musical stave heights or blind-ruled lines for song, and the possible relationship between decorated and filigree letters to over one-hundred cuttings with decorated letters that have also been associated with the San Mattia series. Finally, the study also clarifies the dating of the Murano choir books, which were most likely produced in the 1420s.

One of the most enigmatic Italian illuminators of the fifteenth century is the so- called Master of the Murano Gradual.¹ The eponymous choir book (Berlin, Kupferstichkabinett, MS 78 F.1) contains the sung portions of the Mass for use at the Camaldolese church of San Mattia a Murano in the Venetian lagoon. The volume is heavily decorated: there are forty- eight historiated initials (forty- two of which contain prophets) and six decorated letters. The manuscript has not been digitized, and only six of the illuminations have been reproduced, often in black and white with a single color reproduction of the only full- page miniature.² A fenestra (or window) label on the binding indicates that this gradual was the fourth in the set for San Mattia.³ The original series of songbooks survives in a dispersed and fragmentary condition as follows:

• • The Berlin volume containing chants of the temporale portion of the liturgical year (those related to the life of Christ) from Easter Sunday until the twenty- third Sunday after Pentecost;

• • Dispersed cuttings of over fifty known historiated initials by the Murano Master(s) in twenty- six collections across Europe, Russia, and the United States that likely formed part of multiple volumes, including the sanctorale feasts (those commemorating the lives of saints), a hymnal, and an antiphonary for services of the Divine Office (Appendix A);⁴ and

• • A second temporale volume, from the first Sunday in Advent to the second Sunday in Lent, presently in the Biblioteca Nazionale Braidense in Milan (MS AB. XVIII. 28), contains sixteen historiated initials and seven decorated letters by Cristoforo Cortese (active from about 1390 to 1445).⁵

Together, the Berlin and Milan Graduals, as they are conventionally called, complete the temporale chants for the liturgical year; the manuscripts have the same dimensions (60 × 42 cm), number of musical staves per page (6), and stave heights (4 cm, with 3.5 cm between each). Based on the fenestra label inscription, the graduals would have been accompanied by at least two additional volumes, which can be partially reconstructed from the group of dispersed cuttings.

This article provides new insights into the corpus of the Master of the Murano Gradual, informed by the authors’ close observation of all known surviving fragments, as well as some promising technical analysis of the workshop’s materials and the first assessment of the complicated provenance histories of the cuttings.⁶ Our aims are threefold: first, to clarify the chronology of the artist’s career and the timeframe of the Murano commission, which scholars have dated from the 1420s to the late 1460s; second, to provide a comprehensive list of the fragments from the dispersed choir books, a resource that is lacking in present literature, especially as many new works continue to come to light; and third, to discuss the potential for digitally reconstructing the dispersed choir books and the benefits of using technology in this collaborative endeavor, as such a project naturally reveals the benefits and limitations of virtually reuniting dismembered manuscripts. Notwithstanding the limited access to images of the Berlin Gradual, many of the codices and cuttings that will be addressed in this study have been digitized (if at varying quality), and several are available for consultation and comparison online through the International Image Interoperability Framework (IIIF). The authors have embraced virtual messaging and meeting platforms to simultaneously study many of the manuscripts and cuttings discussed below on multiple occasions, thereby creating a real- time method for international collaboration even before the COVID- 19 pandemic necessitated an increase in digital approaches to collaborative research.

The Camaldolese Context and the Dispersal of the San Mattia Choir Books

The Camaldolese Order was founded by Saint Romuald (ca. 952–1027) in about 1012 in Camaldoli, near Arezzo in central Italy.⁷ Saint Romuald believed that the Benedictine order had moved away from its traditional aspiration of uniting both aspects of monastic life: eremitical (isolated) and cenobitic (communal). He sought to bring their monastic life back into the spiritual balance originally envisioned by Saint Benedict.⁸ In a cutting from the San Mattia volumes, the saint dreams of a ladder topped by God the Father upon which angels climb and descend and which is witnessed by men and women in white garments, a reference throughout the scene to the habit of the order (fig. 1). Across the series of cuttings, figures in white robes or garments create continued visual references to the order’s dress.

Over the course of the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries, a triangulated relationship developed between the Camaldolese houses of Santa Maria degli Angeli in Florence and of San Mattia and San Michele in Murano. Of the many Camaldolese establishments throughout the Italian peninsula, Santa Maria degli Angeli was most famous for its scriptorium, a fact celebrated by Giorgio Vasari (1511−74). It is very likely that the Venetian houses wanted their manuscripts to mirror a set made for use by their Florentine brothers. Mirella Levi D’Ancona and Gaudenz Freuler worked to reassemble a pair of choir books illuminated in Florence for the church of San Michele

Figure 1.

Initial O (?): The Dream of Saint Romuald and reverse, Master of the Murano Gradual, about 1420s. Boston, Museum of Fine Arts, 1973.692.

in Isola adjacent to Murano that were dismembered in the nineteenth century during the Napoleonic invasion of Italy.⁹ According to Freuler, and accepted by others, the Santa Maria degli Angeli artists heavily influenced

Figure 2.

Initial T: A Bishop Dedicating a Church and decorated letter O, Master of the Murano Gradual, about 1420s. London, The British Library, Courtesy of the British Library Board, MS Add. 60630, fol. 10.

the Murano Master, as traces of their style are evident in the eponymous gradual by the Venetian illuminator. A large cutting from the San Mattia series showing A Bishop Dedicating a Church (fig. 2), for example, is framed by a prismatic band of blue, white, and orange triangles or diamonds, a pattern found throughout the Florentine volumes (as seen in a large cutting designed by Lorenzo Monaco for Santa Maria degli Angeli and completed by followers of Fra Angelico, fig. 3).¹⁰

Several cuttings by the Murano Master demonstrate the illuminator’s impressive capacity for rendering three- dimensionality on a two- dimensional surface. This spatial quality was found in the Santa Maria degli Angeli illuminations—especially those by Lorenzo Monaco—but the Murano Master developed it further, seen especially in the way figures fill the letterforms.

Figure 3.

Initial V: The Ascension from the Santa Maria degli Angeli choir books, designed about 1410 by Lorenzo Monaco, completed about 1431 by Zanobi di Benedetto Strozzi and Battista di Biagio Sanguini. Los Angeles, Getty Museum, MS 78 (2003.104).

Figure 4.

Initial M: The Crucifixion of Saint Andrew and ruled reverse, Master of the Murano Gradual, about 1420s. St. Louis, St. Louis Art Museum, 36:1953.

Take the initial M in The Crucifixion of Saint Andrew, for example (fig. 4): the Murano Master applied a pale red pigment as a base and used darker tones for shading around the edges of the leaves, creating the illusion that they are peeling off both the initial and the parchment. The Murano Master also used paint to enhance the three- dimensional quality of the landscapes in the San Mattia illuminations. In the initial O in The Dream of Saint Romuald, the artist applied varying degrees of shading along the edges of the craggy mountainous background to create the illusion of grooves within the natural landscape (see fig. 1). The mountains and hills appear to rise off the parchment in a manner similar to the Murano Master’s approach for rendering the faces of figures in his oeuvre. Lastly, in the initial with Saint Margaret (Appendix A, no. 28), the Murano Master used the dragon to form part of the bar of the letter itself—another testament to the artist’s creativity.

The provenance of the San Mattia choir books and cuttings reveals a history of dispersal beginning in the late eighteenth century, during the dissolution of many Italian churches and monasteries. Alexander, tenth Duke of Hamilton (1767−1852), owned the Berlin Gradual, which he must have acquired while living in the Veneto in the late 1790s and early 1800s. The volume was purchased by the Kupferstichkabinett in 1888, auctioned by the German government in 1898, then reacquired by the state library in 1903.¹¹ The Milan Gradual was recorded at the Palazzo Brera in 1810 but without additional evidence for how it arrived there.¹² At least sixteen of the initials from the remaining dispersed volumes were sold at Sotheby’s, London, in 1838 in the public sale of William Young Ottley (1771−1836), who likely acquired them during his travels in Italy in the 1790s (he mentions acquiring them from Murano; Appendix B). Four of the cuttings, arguably the most impressive given their subject matter and catalogue descriptions, were acquired by the Reverend John Fuller Russell (1813−1884). The whereabouts of only two of those are known: the Fitzwilliam Death of the Virgin and the British Library Dedication of a Church (see Appendix A, nos. 2 and 8); the scenes of The Annunciation and The Presentation have not been located. A certain “Tindall” purchased three from the Ottley sale, each of which can be identified with the cuttings once in the Holford collection (Appendix A, nos. 10, 18, and 38). The two cuttings in the Cluny Museum in Paris were bequeathed in 1843 by its founder, Alexandre Du Sommerard (1779–1832), and were inventoried in 1847 as part of the collection (Appendix A, nos. 19–20). Peter Kidd has determined that fifteen historiated initials were sold by Boerner in Leipzig on 13 November 1908—the present location of eight of these remains unknown.¹³ The largest repository of the San Mattia fragments today is the Wildenstein Collection at the Musée Marmottan in Paris, which has an impressive leaf showing The Mission to the Apostles (sometimes identified as Pentecost) and thirteen historiated or figural initials (eleven of these were once part of the collection of Édouard Kann, which was dispersed in 1927).¹⁴ The words Inclitus pater rector on the leaf with The Mission to the Apostles indicates that the page was from a hymnal, containing hymns at times together with a Psaltery of Psalm texts sung at the canonical hours of the day.¹⁵ This important but overlooked point indicates that the original San Mattia a Murano series also included volumes for the Divine Office. The liturgical content of the reverse sides of the Wildenstein holdings has been neither photographed nor published (all the items appear to be matted to card or parchment and are tightly framed in the museum vitrines), allowing for the possibility that some of these may have been part of the gradual or antiphonary.¹⁶ Additionally, Christopher de Hamel suggested that four decorated letters may be related to the parent manuscript(s).¹⁷ This group of cuttings now amounts to nearly 150 decorated letters in at least ten collections, but their association with the Murano manuscripts does not seem likely, as will be explored further below (Appendix C).

Distinguishing the Master(s) of the Murano Gradual from Peer Illuminators

For ninety years, a layer of confusion has surrounded the identity of the Murano Master, who is better characterized as a master and a workshop of assistants, as we will propose in this article. The chronological span of the shop’s activity has been established through associations with two well- documented illuminators: Giovanni Belbello da Pavia (active from about 1430 to 1473), whose style is as idiosyncratic as that of the Murano Master, and Cristoforo Cortese, who contributed to the Camaldolese project in Murano, as mentioned above. In 1930, Pietro Toesca deduced similarities between the Berlin Gradual and cuttings from the dispersed choral volumes, and he noted affinities with Venetian illumination.¹⁸ Studying the fragments from the Wildenstein Collection in 1950, Mirella Levi D’Ancona attributed the painting style to Belbello da Pavia, but these are now accepted as part of the core of the Murano Master’s output (with the exception of two initials; see Appendix A).¹⁹ The lingering conundrum is that art historians continue to compare and at times conflate the oeuvres of Belbello and the Murano Master(s), though scholars presently agree that each was a unique personality.²⁰ It is entirely possible that these two illuminators worked together, as their painting styles share certain stylistic features, including the use of numerous layers to render a figure’s draped body or expressive facial features (sometimes showing the teeth), a vibrant color palette and application of colori cangianti for textiles or floral motifs, and the use of gold in all its forms (as burnished leaf at times with painted detail, as shell gold, and as the chemically synthesized golden pigment aurum musicum, known as mosaic gold). The reader can see these features in figures 5–6 and can explore them even more closely using the IIIF online interface.²¹

A few features emerge as possible distinguishing characteristics of each illuminator: the cutting with Saint Blaise assigned to the Murano Master and hailing from a dispersed volume of the San Mattia gradual (fig. 5) contains foliate designs with white or yellow eyelash- like strokes, as well as penwork in lead white (which has darkened over time), whereas the scrolling vines and letterform on a leaf with a Young Christ Blessing attributed

Figure 5.

Initial G: Saint Blaise and decorated letter D (reverse), Master of the Murano Gradual, about 1420s. Los Angeles, J. Paul Getty Museum, MS 73 (2003.87), recto and verso.

to Belbello (fig. 6) include larger color fields with modulated values and scalloped patterning within the foliate initial. These distinctions can be seen as well in the decorated letters on the reverse of each, a factor that also aids in disassociating De Hamel’s group of initials from the Murano series due to the dissimilar decorative treatments and shapes of those letterforms. Another observable difference is that Belbello often rendered halos in a more ovular way than the Murano Master, who embellished nimbuses with black or red ink or at times burnished the gold and added script- like decoration (possibly emulating Arabic, Armenian, or Hebrew).²²

Figure 6.

Initial A: Young Christ Blessing and decorated letter V (reverse) from Antiphonal P of San Giorgio Maggiore, Belbello da Pavia, about 1467–70. Los Angeles, Getty Museum, MS 96 (2005.29), recto and verso.

From the aforementioned contrasting features, scholars have constructed a robust artistic personality for the Master of the Murano Gradual. Certain hallmarks of this hand or workshop include the colorful rendering of voluminous fabrics produced using a linear hatching pattern (as in the cuttings with Saints Michael and Lawrence; figs. 7–8), the sculptural quality with which the artist painted faces so that they appear to rise off the surface of the parchment (such as Saint Jerome or the unidentified Bishop Saint; figs. 9–10), and figures and narrative scenes that maximize the space within a foliate initial letter (seen in The Crucifixion of Saint Andrew and The Dormition of the Virgin; figs. 4 and 11). The Master of the Murano Gradual often layered flesh tones with brown, white, and yellow over a pinkish- red ground, creating a bronzed complexion at times accented with warm orange and red tones. The artist’s astounding ability to convey the inner psychological and emotional states of his figures was achieved through this use of heavy modeling and attention to physiognomic details, such as eyebrows and lips. All

Figure 7.

Initial B: Saint Michael Transfixing Satan, Master of the Murano Gradual, about 1420s. New York, Morgan Library & Museum, MS M 1129.

Figure 8.

Initial C: Saint Lawrence and reverse, Master of the Murano Gradual, about 1420s. Washington, DC, National Gallery of Art, inv. B- 14, 842.

Figure 9.

Saint Jerome Extracting a Thorn from a Lion’s Paw and ruled reverse, Master of the Murano Gradual, about 1420s. Los Angeles, J. Paul Getty Museum, MS 106 (2010.21), recto and verso.

Figure 10.

Initial I: A Bishop- Saint and reverse, Master of the Murano Gradual, about 1420s. Plzen, Západoceské Muzeum, Inv. 2972.

Figure 11.

Initial G: The Dormition of the Virgin and reverse, Master of the Murano Gradual, about 1420s. Cambridge, Fitzwilliam Museum, Marlay Cutting It. 18.

these qualities contribute to the whimsical and elegant qualities of the Murano Master’s work.

Essential to sorting out the possible relationship between the Master of the Murano Gradual and Belbello are eight manuscripts that have hitherto been attributed to Belbello, at times with mention of the Murano Master as being a stylistic peer or potential collaborator. Remarkably, the majority of these codices are dated or datable, as well as digitized or partially available online. One manuscript at the heart of the debate is the famous Visconti Hours (Florence, Biblioteca Nazionale Centrale, Banco Rari 397 and Landau Finlay 22).²³ The devotional text was illuminated in two phases: about 1390s by Salomone and Giovannino de’ Grassi for Duke Gian Galeazzo Visconti (r. 1395–1402) and then from about 1412 to about 1430 by additional hands under the patronage of Duke Filippo Maria Visconti (r. 1412–47). Antonio Cadei suggested that a team of anonymous illuminators worked with Belbello on the second campaign, and Cadei christened them after outstanding miniatures: the Maestro del Genesi, the Maestro di Mosè, and the Maestro del Battesimo di Cristo (also known as the Maestro del De natura deorum).²⁴ By contrast, Serena Padovani put forward a groundbreaking argument suggesting that Belbello and the Murano Master were distinct personalities who worked closely together on that project and that each had prolific careers of their own.²⁵ A portion of the manuscript can be studied online through a digital surrogate, and facsimile editions range from limited to complete reproductions of the volumes.²⁶ The borders of the manuscript are filled with life: human and angelic figures, animals and insects, and elaborate foliage. These features were common in manuscripts from Lombardy at the time and find holdovers in the works of Belbello and the Murano Master elsewhere. Several of the illuminations in the Visconti Hours feature prismatic Gothicizing architecture and vast landscapes that at times display vegetation rendered in gold to create a shimmering aesthetic effect, an approach used by both artists. The example of the Visconti Hours provides a glimpse of the debates surrounding early Quattrocento Venetian manuscript studies, and of the challenge inherent in sorting out the hands of illuminators or workshops that employed many of the same visual strategies and effects. In line with current scholarship, both campaigns of the Visconti Hours should be viewed as collaborative undertakings by consortia of illuminators.

The remaining manuscripts under consideration span the 1420s to early 1460s, and several were commissioned by patrons of significant rank. Roughly contemporaneous with the Visconti Hours is a copy of Cicero’s De Oratore (Vatican City, Biblioteca Apostolica Vaticana, Ott. Lat. 2057) that was decorated in 1422 for Francesco Bossi, bishop of Como (d. 1435).²⁷ Next is a two- volume compendium of the Acta sanctorum (Milan, Biblioteca Nazionale Braidense, MS AF. XIV, 19 and 20), the first volume of which is dated 1431.²⁸ The Bible of Niccolò III d’Este (r. 1393–1441) (Vatican City, Biblioteca Apostolica Vaticana, MS Barb. Lat. 613) was produced for the marquis of Ferrara from 1432 to 1433 and was completed by Jacopino d’Arezzo.²⁹ The illuminations in the Bible also suggest that multiple artists were involved, perhaps another instance of collaboration between the Murano Master and Belbello. The Missal of Barbara of Brandenburg- Gonzaga (Mantua, Archivio Storico Diocesano, Capitolo del Duomo) was completed in phases from 1442 to 1444 (at the behest of Gianlucido Gonzaga [1421–1448]), then from 1448 to 1450, and finally from 1460 to 1461 (under the patronage of Marchioness Barbara of Brandenburg- Gonzaga; following the last phase, Girolamo da Cremona took over and completed the commission).³⁰ The Hours of Bertrando de’ Rossi (Paris, Bibliothèque nationale de France, MS Smith Lesouëf 22) features at least three other Lombard illuminators possibly working in the 1380s and completed with minor interventions (attributed to Belbello) possibly in the 1460s.³¹ Finally, the Marcello Hours (London, British Library, Add. MS 15114) was possibly completed in the 1460s.³²

The Brandenburg- Gonzaga Missal is the only manuscript from this group to which Belbello can be unequivocally associated, as testified by a number of archival documents, whereas the other manuscripts are attributed to him or to illuminators from his circle (including the Murano Master) based on connoisseurship. In fact, the dating of these additional codices has defined the career arc of the Master of the Murano Gradual, who is thought to have been active from about the 1420s to the 1440s (and occasionally as late as the 1470s), therefore contemporary with the Visconti Hours, De Oratore, and the Bible of Niccolò III, but prior to the Brandenburg- Gonzaga Missal and the two books of hours. By 1473, documents reveal that Belbello was in the Venetian lagoon undertaking a commission of choir books for the Church of San Giorgio Maggiore at the request of the Duke of Milan, Galeazzo Maria Sforza (r. 1466–76).³³ The letterforms of historiated and decorated initials in the San Giorgio Maggiore volumes are different enough from those in the San Mattia choir books (the Berlin and Milan volumes, as well as the fragments) to support the distinction between Belbello and the Murano Master; the variation does not seem to be a mere stylistic evolution of a single artist when one considers the consistency between Belbello’s illuminations in the Brandenburg- Gonzaga Missal and the San Giorgio manuscripts.

Like the San Mattia choir books, the San Giorgio music manuscripts survive either as bound volumes on the Isola or in public collections as leaves and cuttings. In several instances, fragments from the Murano and San Giorgio volumes are found in the same collections (such as the Getty Museum, the Wildenstein Collection at the Musée Marmottan, the Morgan Library & Museum, and others). This situation, which is merely a reflection of later collecting history, further obfuscates the possibility of fully reassembling either set, especially in the absence of clear provenance. A primary example is the Wildenstein initial R with Saint Catherine of Alexandria, which is sometimes assigned to the Murano Master or to the San Mattia Gradual, but most likely came from the San Giorgio volumes and was painted by Belbello’s workshop. In the Marmottan manuscript gallery, the cutting is displayed with the Murano group, whereas the San Giorgio fragments are located across the room.

Another artist to contend with in relation to the Murano Master’s period of activity is Cristoforo Cortese, who worked on parchment and panel for over five decades (from 1390 to 1445).³⁴ At present, scholars have identified three signed works by him, as well as documents such as lease agreements, wills, and accounts that refer to him alternatively as pictor or as miniator.³⁵ The artistic dynamic between Cortese and the Murano Master is best seen by examining the choir books made for San Mattia. As mentioned above, the Milan Gradual has been attributed to Cortese, and the codicological evidence provided earlier suggests that it was part of the San Mattia series.³⁶ Additionally, Cortese had a pre- existing professional relationship with the Camaldolese at San Mattia. In 1391, he was commissioned to illuminate a registry book listing all the monastery’s assets. It would not have been unusual for San Mattia to keep Cortese in their employ for additional commissions such as a choir book series.

Cortese’s stylistic progression needs to be better assessed, given the sizable corpus attributed to him and the fact that his approach to painting appears to have changed significantly over time, but this task is beyond the scope of the present essay. Based on comparison of some of Cortese’s datable works with the illuminations in the Milan Gradual, it is reasonable to suggest that this volume was likely produced during the late 1410s or early 1420s. Situating the volumes by the Murano Master within a 1420s date range accords with the stylistic analysis mentioned above and allows the possibility that some time may have transpired during the commission. Some visual parallels in page layout can be drawn between the Milan and Berlin Graduals, but the styles of the two illuminators and their shops are markedly distinct. The decorative program of the San Mattia volumes was likely modeled on the choir books produced for the church of San Michele in Isola from about 1392 to 1399 by Don Silvestro dei Gheraducci, Don Simone Camaldolese, Don Lorenzo Monaco, and others.³⁷ While the Murano Master maintained a sophisticated palette and approach to rendering figures throughout his oeuvre, Cortese’s style is at once recognizable but variable, especially when comparing several works. The attribution of a large body of work of varying quality to Cortese has therefore distorted the perceived consistency of his output.³⁸

Technical analysis offers other ways to differentiate the working methods of these illuminators. Investigations undertaken at the Fitzwilliam Museum in Cambridge, in collaboration with the Getty Museum and the National Gallery of Art in Washington, D.C., have revealed the presence of smalt (cobalt oxide or cobalt carbonate) in certain but not all of the cuttings from the Murano Gradual.³⁹ Might this choice of pigment be indicative of the workshop in general or of an individual artist’s hand? Continued study of the San Giorgio Maggiore choir books confirmed the same phenomenon: namely, that this blue material was employed by some but not all of those involved in the project (it was not used by Belbello in the two illuminations studied from Corale M of the series, nor was it used by Cristoforo Cortese in Corale N and Missal CXII).⁴⁰ Additionally, due to the flaking of gold and pigments on the cutting with Saint George in the Wildenstein Collection (Appendix A, no. 23), a fairly elaborate underdrawing is visible. At present, a broader sample of references is needed, and yet much already has been learned about the group of cuttings in the past several years.

Brief mention should be made of the Maestro di San Nazario, named by Tiziana Franco for miniatures in an antiphonary in the Archive of the Cathedral of Capodistria (Koper), Slovenia (containing the communale for the Divine Office and featuring six historiated initials).⁴¹ Franco suggested that the illuminator may have collaborated on the Berlin Gradual (possibly painting the prophet on fol. 108v) and may be the artist of a manuscript of Titus Livius’s Historiae (Paris, Bibliothèque nationale de France, MS Lat. 5734), dated 1418. The volume in Slovenia includes a decoration by a range of hands, and in fact the illuminations in the Titus Livius manuscript more closely resemble works by Cristoforo Cortese in terms of figure type, palette, and foliage design in the borders. The Maestro di San Nazario certainly constitutes another strand in the broader milieu of Venetian illumination of the early Quattrocento. Acknowledging the potential plurality of anonymous hands such as the Maestro di San Nazario and the varying styles apparent within the oeuvres of the Murano Master and Cortese reveals the Renaissance workshop in action and also sheds light on the fact that illuminators often worked together through collaborations or as consortia. Despite the relative stylistic consistency in illuminations attributed to the Murano Master, some variation does occur and may eventually reveal the work of distinct individuals within a single shop.

As we have seen, scholars often compare the work of the Murano Master to material created by better- known or better- documented individuals. Another approach is to draw intermedial associations, or connections across media. For example, the expressive quality of the Master of the Murano Gradual’s saints has been compared to the frescoes by Giovanni da Modena in the Bolognini Chapel (also called the Cappella dei Magi for the cycle related to the story of the three kings) in the Church of San Petronio in Bologna, dated to about 1410.⁴² References to paintings by Michele Giambono, especially the Fano Polyptych of about 1422–25, have also been made concerning the Murano Master’s “Gothicizing tendencies” that draw upon Lombard and Venetian precedents.⁴³ In sum, while the Murano Master’s style has become increasingly clear to scholars, the artist’s origins, dates of activity, and movements throughout the Italian peninsula have not been clarified. Based on the evidence reviewed above, it seems prudent to narrow the chronological range of the San Mattia series to about 1420 to the early 1430s, as opposed to a fifty- year span, and to acknowledge that the illuminator was part of an active network of artists in northern Italy.

A Fragmentary Future: Collaborative Strategies and Digital Rewards

The reconstruction of the San Mattia choir books is beset by numerous challenges, foremost among which is the fragmentary state of the volumes. As mentioned at the start, the Berlin Gradual has received little direct study by scholars and is not available for digital consultation. The list of cuttings from the dispersed manuscripts continues to grow, including an initial with a saint in the Pushkin State Museum of Fine Art that has been overlooked in scholarship on the Murano volumes beyond the discovery in 2010 (fig. 12).⁴⁴ We know that several more illuminations have yet to be located based on the provenance research shared in Appendix A. The total number of known cuttings (fifty- one) is slightly more than the total historiated initials in the Berlin Gradual (forty- eight), a comparison that may indicate that the majority of the removed miniatures have been located (though it

Figure 12.

Initial M: A Saint, Master of the Murano Gradual, about 1420s. Moscow, Pushkin State Museum of Fine Arts, Inv. OF Arch. 25359.

should be noted that the present whereabouts of eleven remain unknown). To begin to reconstruct the series, one must be able to identify or hypothesize the liturgical content of each of the cuttings. This task can be straightforward when the iconography is clear, as in The Birth of the Virgin, or when the initial letter is identifiable (several are not, due to the way they were trimmed) and contains a recognizable figure such as Saint Blaise. When available, the text and musical notation on the reverse of the cuttings are especially helpful in revealing the identity of the scene or figure on the opposite side. This combination of evidence has allowed us to identify the original sequence of seventeen of the fifty- one cuttings (Appendix A, nos. 2, 3, 6, 9, 12, 13, 17, 18, 19, 23, 24, 25, 28, 29, 37, 38, and 50) and to hypothesize the placement of others (for example, either of the figures in Appendix A, nos. 30 and 31, likely represents Saint Paul, whose feast is commemorated on 29 June). In many instances the back is inaccessible, as several fragments have been pasted onto card or framed without documentation of the reverse. Multiple figures can only be identified as “A Bishop” or “A Female Saint,” which is also how they are sometimes referred to in auction or collection catalogues. At the Sotheby’s sale of the Ottley collection in 1838, for example, lots 36 and 37 are listed as bishops, which could refer to several cuttings (see Appendix B). Scholars have identified the bearded figure in at least three cuttings as Saint Augustine (Appendix A, nos. 5, 11, and 29), but the best candidate for this saint is in the Wildenstein Collection (Appendix A, no. 29). A final point about the Ottley sale is that the identifiable illuminations were for feasts in March and between May and August, giving a sense of the seasonal volume(s) that was dismembered.

In addition to the geographical dispersion, there are stylistic and technical issues with which to contend. When the cuttings are examined as a whole, it becomes clear that there are stylistic variations, which are to be expected to a certain degree in such an undertaking. Cuttings in the Wildenstein Collection at the Musée Marmottan best reveal these differences. Additionally, hitherto unnoticed is the fact that in at least two instances the cuttings contain neither decoration nor music on the reverse: The Crucifixion of Saint Andrew and Saint Jerome feature lines drawn in silverpoint that indicate the space for chant between musical staves but which remain undrawn (see figs. 4 and 9). The measurement between these spaces is consistent with other cuttings from the set (4 cm).

Lastly, as mentioned earlier, in the Sotheby’s auction catalogue for 5 December 1994 Christopher de Hamel described four decorated letters in lot 3 as possibly pertaining to “the Murano Gradual,” by which he meant the San Mattia choir books.⁴⁵ Since that time, nearly 150 stylistically similar additional cuttings have come to light, usually at auction, but others have also been identified in museums, libraries, and private collections (see Appendix C). The largest groupings of these letters are the Museo Correr in Venice (46 cuttings), the Free Library of Philadelphia (27), the British Library (BL; 22), the Victoria & Albert Museum (V&A; 19), and the Art Institute of Chicago (12).⁴⁶ The cuttings in London entered their present institutions in 1858 (BL), from the former collection of John Matthew Gutch (1776–1861), and by 1860 (V&A), giving a terminus ante quem for when the fragments were dispersed.⁴⁷ To date there has been little direct study and assessment of the set with the surviving initials on the backs of cuttings associated with the Murano Gradual.⁴⁸ Of the known fragments from the San Mattia choir books, five contain decorated letters on the reverse (listed in Appendix A), and these feature lead white penwork (at times tarnished) and the characteristic eyelash- like strokes on the foliate design. The decorated initial I on the cutting in Plzen (see fig. 10) shares some generic features with initials on a page in the British Library (Add. MS 22310, fol. 11; fig. 13), but the majority of these on the London page differ from the initial D on the reverse of a cutting in Los Angeles (see fig. 5). Across the British Library page, comparisons can also be made with decorated letters illuminated by Belbello, in the Brandenburg- Gonzaga Missal, as well as in the San Giorgio Maggiore choir books (either those in situ on the Isola di San Giorgio, in an antiphonary from the series at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, or as dispersed leaves in collections across Europe and America; see fig. 6).⁴⁹ A cherub within an initial I in the Victoria & Albert Museum does resemble similar figures in the Berlin Gradual (Kupferstichkabinett, MS 78 F.1, fols. 144, 159). Finally, a foliate border in an album at the Houghton Library was once part of a page from the Murano Gradual that contained The Dormition of the Virgin now in the Fitzwilliam Museum (fig. 14). Bryan C. Keene first demonstrated this relationship to Peter Kidd, who created a partial digital reconstruction.⁵⁰ The remaining

Figure 13.

Page of decorated letters. London, The British Library, Courtesy of the British Library Board, Add. MS 22310, fol. 11.

fragments on the Houghton Library page were doubtless from the San Giorgio Maggiore choir books. Further study of the entire group of illuminations just mentioned is in order, and a combination of digitization and technical analysis may provide some answers to the lingering conundrum

Figure 14.

Border decoration (rightmost foliate design), Master of the Murano Gradual, about 1420s. Boston, Harvard University, Houghton Library, MS Typ. 995, fol. 1.

about the origin of these fragments. The presence of such a large number of these initials in the Museo Correr does seem to indicate a Venetian provenance for the series.

In addition to the need for further study of this material, digital technology affords many opportunities for virtual collaborations across vast distances and for reconstructing dismembered objects. The issue of geographical dispersion of cuttings can be remedied using the digitized collections, and more specifically in the case of the Murano cuttings, to be able to “reassemble” them virtually, thereby allowing us to see them as the monks would have, in liturgical order. Notably, the Fragmentarium.ms project, an online laboratory for medieval manuscript fragments, endeavors to become a robust, central clearing house for so- called fragmentology work.⁵¹ The use of social media has also proven to be a highly effective means for fragments to be “rediscovered” as leaves from the same disbound manuscript have been found in some instances because of a social media post.

The advancement of the field of digital humanities means that collaboration can take place from anywhere and involve scholars who are, much like these manuscript cuttings, located in diverse institutions all over the globe. These tools can greatly enhance our abilities to study objects and to collaborate with scholars worldwide, thus making future projects more accessible and inclusive of scholars from varied backgrounds. In many ways, the collaborative process of writing this article mirrors the one required to make the choir books under study. Using various digital modalities, we have been able to undertake the research necessary to study these objects together, no matter where they are around the world. This article was co- authored by two scholars who work on different continents thanks to technologies such as Google Docs and Skype, which have allowed us to contribute equally to this endeavor while both in situ and when studying each of the fragments under consideration in person.

In sum, this overall reassessment of the Master of the Murano Gradual’s career and corpus has clarified the following points. First, the illuminator appears to have employed a workshop of assistants or collaborators and to have possibly collaborated with Belbello da Pavia. This phenomenon is consistent with contemporary practices in the Veneto and can be corroborated by the variations in paint handling in the Berlin Gradual and across the set of cuttings from the rest of the San Mattia choir books. Second, the series of choral manuscripts was most likely undertaken in the 1420s to early 1430s, a dating that can be confirmed through comparisons with dated or datable manuscripts by Cristoforo Cortese—another contributor to the Murano project—or in codices hitherto assigned to Belbello but more likely the result of collaborations involving the Murano Master(s). Third, technical analysis reveals that some illuminators in the Veneto used mixtures of ultramarine and cobalt- containing smalt, while others did not, and these pigment choices may help to distinguish the hands of individual illuminators. And finally, some of the more than one hundred decorated letters that have been loosely connected to the San Mattia choir books may in fact have been part of the dispersed volumes, but the majority are stylistically dissimilar to initials found in the Berlin Gradual or on the backs of known fragments from the set. One goal of this study has been to use online technology and available resources to virtually reassemble the Murano choir books. Such an endeavor is ongoing through partnerships and collaborations dedicated to deepening an understanding of the splendors of the Serenissima.