Initial G[audeamus omnes] from a Gradual: The Court of Heaven (1371–77): Art, History and Details

Initial G[audeamus omnes] from a Gradual: The Court of Heaven (1371–77) is in the Cleveland Museum of Art collection. The museum's creator attribution is Don Silvestro dei Gherarducci (Italian, 1339–1399).

The work and its context

The museum's open-access catalogue describes the work:

This elegant and colorful initial G comes from a multivolume set of choral books illuminated by Don Silvestro, a Camaldolese monk, for his monastery of Santa Maria degli Angeli in Florence. In the original book, this initial would have introduced the text: Gaudeamus omnes in Domino (“Let us rejoice in the Lord”), the beginning of Introit, the introduction, for the Feast of All Saints on November 1. This beautiful initial is generally considered to be the artist’s masterpiece.

Object facts

• Title: Initial G[audeamus omnes] from a Gradual: The Court of Heaven
• Date: 1371–77
• Creator attribution: Don Silvestro dei Gherarducci (Italian, 1339–1399)
• Culture: Italy, Florence
• Type: Manuscript
• Technique: ink, tempera, and gold on vellum
• Dimensions: Sheet: 38.6 x 36.5 cm (15 3/16 x 14 3/8 in.); Framed: 68.9 x 53 cm (27 1/8 x 20 7/8 in.); Matted: 63.5 x 47.6 cm (25 x 18 3/4 in.)
• Collection: MED - Manuscript Illuminations
• Department: Medieval Art
• Accession number: 1930.105

Collection credit

Purchase from the J. H. Wade Fund

Further reading listed by the museum

• Cleveland Museum of Art. Catalogue of the Twentieth Anniversary Exhibition of the Cleveland Museum of Art: The Official Art Exhibit of the Great Lakes Exposition : June Twenty-Sixth to October Fourth 1936. [Cleveland, Ohio]: [Cleveland Museum of Art], 1936.
• Walters Art Gallery (Baltimore, Md.), and Dorothy Eugenia Miner. Illuminated Books of the Middle Ages and Renaissance: An Exhibition Held at the Baltimore Museum of Art, January 27-March 13. Baltimore: Trustees of the Walters Art Gallery, 1949.
• Milliken, William. "Miniatures by Lorenzo Monaco and Francesco del Cherico." The Bulletin of the Cleveland Museum of Art 37, no. 3 (March 1950): 43-46.

View the collection record

See the museum's photographs and full catalogue entry. Catalogue text is reproduced from the Cleveland Museum of Art's open-access data, with HTML formatting removed. This object and its supplied image are designated CC0.