Leaf from a Gradual: Initial P with the Nativity (c. 1500): Art, History and Details

Leaf from a Gradual: Initial P with the Nativity (c. 1500) is in the Cleveland Museum of Art collection. The museum's creator attribution is Attavante degli Attavanti (Italian, c. 1452-c. 1525); Workshop.

The work and its context

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

This beautiful initial P introduces the text Puer natus e[st] nobis, et filius datus est nobis (“For a child is born to us, and a son is given to us”) which marks the opening of the Introit for Christmas Day. The text, taken from Isaiah 9:6, continues, “. . . and his name shall be called Wonderful.” It is used to celebrate one of the most joyous events of the Christian Church—the birth of Christ. This splendid leaf from a manuscript gradual contains the chants used for solemn high Mass on Christmas Day. The initial P features sprays of foliage that emerge and migrate along three sides of the page. Painted by Attavante degli Attavanti, one of the most prominent Florentine illuminators of the late 15th century—whose patrons included Duke Federigo da Montefeltro of Urbino, King Matthias Corvinus of Hungary, and the Medici Pope Leo X—the initial is characteristic of Attavante’s use of a bright, sunny palette. His miniatures often include detailed landscapes with receding vistas and sundrenched hills, townscapes, and ultramarine skies.

Object facts

• Title: Leaf from a Gradual: Initial P with the Nativity
• Date: c. 1500
• Creator attribution: Attavante degli Attavanti (Italian, c. 1452-c. 1525); Workshop
• Culture: Italy, Florence
• Type: Manuscript
• Technique: ink, tempera and gold on vellum
• Dimensions: Each leaf: 59.8 x 4.1 cm (23 9/16 x 1 5/8 in.)
• Collection: MED - Manuscript Illuminations
• Department: Medieval Art
• Accession number: 2003.173

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.
• Alexander, J. J. G. The Painted Book in Renaissance Italy: 1450-1600. New Haven: Yale University Press, 2016.
• Fliegel, Stephen N. “Initial Impressions." Cleveland Art: Cleveland Museum of Art Members Magazine 56, no. 2 (March/April 2016): 16-17.

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.