Leaf from an Antiphonary: Text (verso) (c. 1480): Art, History and Details

Leaf from an Antiphonary: Text (verso) (c. 1480) is in the Cleveland Museum of Art collection.

The work and its context

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

The border ornament and initial design of this leaf have stylistic affinities with South German illumination of the late 1400s and particularly with the Augsburg workshops. It survives along with two known sister leaves with textual and illustrative references to Saint Clare. This saint was widely venerated during the Middle Ages and is closely associated with Saint Francis who installed her with a group of nuns in a community at Assisi. Francis prescribed an austere way of life for the nuns who became known as the Poor Clares. Saint Clare died in 1253 and was canonized in 1255. The prominent references to Clare in the parent codex to which this leaf belongs implies that it was made for a religious community of that order, perhaps in Augsburg or elsewhere in South Germany.

Object facts

• Title: Leaf from an Antiphonary: Text (verso)
• Date: c. 1480
• Culture: Germany, possibly Augsburg
• Type: Manuscript
• Technique: ink, tempera, and gold on vellum
• Dimensions: Leaf: 62.5 x 41 cm (24 5/8 x 16 1/8 in.)
• Collection: MED - Manuscript Illuminations
• Department: Medieval Art
• Accession number: 2014.25.b

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.

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.