Leaf from a Commission: St. Mark Giving the Keys of Venice to Francesco de Priuli (c. 1523–1524): Art, History and Details

Leaf from a Commission: St. Mark Giving the Keys of Venice to Francesco de Priuli (c. 1523–1524) is in the Cleveland Museum of Art collection. The museum's creator attribution is Benedetto Bordone (Italian).

The work and its context

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

The miniature shows the enthroned figure of Saint Mark, patron saint of Venice, presenting the symbolic keys of Venice to the kneeling figure of Francesco de Priuli upon his appointment as Procurator of Saint Mark's. Beneath the miniature are twelve lines of text, the opening of a ducale issued by Doge Andrea Gritti (1523–38) announcing de Priuli's appointment, which was made in the early 1520s. The text begins, Nos Andreas Griti, Dei gratia Dux venetiarum (Our Andrea Gritti, By the Grace of God Duke of the Venetians). The illumination relates closely to the work of Benedetto Bordon, a Paduan-born miniaturist who became prominent in Venice. The decorative borders appear to be edged in thin gilt-bronze bars that give the illusion of fine metalwork. Four oval cartouches are occupied by the Lion of Saint Mark (top), the de Priuli arms (bottom), Saint Anthony the Great (right), and his symbol, a swine (left). The Priuli Arms below are festooned with wreaths and supported by mermen with horns and pink tails. This exquisite leaf exemplifies the changes in script, page layout, border decoration, and binding developed by the Italian humanist culture of the 1400s.

Object facts

• Title: Leaf from a Commission: St. Mark Giving the Keys of Venice to Francesco de Priuli
• Date: c. 1523–1524
• Creator attribution: Benedetto Bordone (Italian)
• Culture: Italy, Padua and Venice, 16th century
• Type: Manuscript
• Technique: ink, tempera and gold on vellum
• Dimensions: Leaf: 23.1 x 15.7 cm (9 1/8 x 6 3/16 in.)
• Collection: MED - Manuscript Illuminations
• Department: Medieval Art
• Accession number: 2011.69

A detail from the museum

The coat of arms is supported by mermen, male mermaids, who are human from the waist up and fishlike from the waist down.

Collection credit

The Jeanne Miles Blackburn Collection

Further reading listed by the museum

• Fliegel, Stephen N. The Jeanne Miles Blackburn Collection of Manuscript Illuminations. Cleveland, Ohio: Cleveland Museum of Art, 1999.
• Szépe, Helena Katalin. Venice Illuminated: Power and Painting in Renaissance Manuscripts.New Haven; London: Yale University Press, 2018.
• Mikolic, Amanda. A Field Guide to Medieval Monsters. Cleveland: The Cleveland Museum of Art, 2019.

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.