Leaf from an Antiphonary with Historiated Initial (H) with The Nativity (recto) (early 1300s): Art, History and Details

Leaf from an Antiphonary with Historiated Initial (H) with The Nativity (recto) (early 1300s) is in the Cleveland Museum of Art collection.

The work and its context

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

This enormous initial h illustrates the beginning of the text of the first matins response for Christmas Day: Hodie nobis celorum rex (“On this day the King of Heaven”). The initial is appropriately decorated with a scene of Christ’s nativity. Along with other painters and illuminators, Neri da Rimini established the school of Rimini, characterized by a painting style owing much to the work of Giotto, who he perhaps encountered in Padua.

Object facts

• Title: Leaf from an Antiphonary with Historiated Initial (H) with The Nativity (recto)
• Date: early 1300s
• Culture: Italy, Tuscany
• Type: Manuscript
• Technique: ink, tempera, and gold on parchment
• Dimensions: Sheet: 53 x 38 cm (20 7/8 x 14 15/16 in.)
• Collection: MED - Manuscript Illuminations
• Department: Medieval Art
• Accession number: 1953.285.a

Collection credit

Purchase from the J. H. Wade Fund

Further reading listed by the museum

• Milliken, William. "Illuminated Pages by Neri da Rimini and His School." The Bulletin of the Cleveland Museum of Art 40, no. 8 (October 1953): 184, 189-190.

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.