Leaf from the Wettinger Gradual: Historiated Initial (I) with Scenes from the Life of St. Augustine (c. 1330): Art, History and Details

Leaf from the Wettinger Gradual: Historiated Initial (I) with Scenes from the Life of St. Augustine (c. 1330) is in the Cleveland Museum of Art collection. The museum's creator attribution is Second Master of the Wettinger Gradual (German).

The work and its context

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

This imposing leaf comes from the monumental Wettinger Gradual preserved in the Canton Library in Aarau, Switzerland. The focus of the decoration consists of a single massive initial I. It is constructed with four separate compartments featuring scenes from the life of Saint Augustine. The compartments read (from bottom to top): Augustine teaching before his conversion; the dream of Augustine’s mother; Augustine’s baptism; and Augustine teaching monks. The monk in the lower margin holds a scroll that reads in Latin: “Pray for us, blessed Father Augustine.” The initial would have introduced the feast of Saint Augustine (August 28) in the Sanctorale: In medio Ecclesiae aperuit os eius (“And in the midst of the church she shall open his mouth”). Given the prominence of this initial within the gradual, and the depiction of an Augustinian canon in the lower marginal extender, the manuscript was likely produced for a community of Augustinians. Influenced by Parisian manuscript painting, the illuminators added tendril extenders supporting birds, animals, and, below, an Augustinian monk in prayer. Though nothing is known of their lives or careers, both artists have working styles related to Colognese manuscript and panel painting. It is probable that this leaf, and the parent codex from which it comes, would have originally belonged to an Augustinian religious foundation in Cologne.

Object facts

• Title: Leaf from the Wettinger Gradual: Historiated Initial (I) with Scenes from the Life of St. Augustine
• Date: c. 1330
• Creator attribution: Second Master of the Wettinger Gradual (German)
• Culture: Germany, Lower Rhine (Cologne?), 14th century
• Type: Manuscript
• Technique: ink, tempera, and gold on parchment
• Dimensions: Sheet: 57.9 x 38.3 cm (22 13/16 x 15 1/16 in.); Framed: 61.6 x 76.8 cm (24 1/4 x 30 1/4 in.); Matted: 71.1 x 55.9 cm (28 x 22 in.)
• Collection: MED - Manuscript Illuminations
• Department: Medieval Art
• Accession number: 1949.203

Collection credit

Mr. and Mrs. William H. Marlatt Fund

Further reading listed by the museum

• The Cleveland Museum of Art. Handbook of the Cleveland Museum of Art/1966. Cleveland, OH: The Cleveland Museum of Art, 1966.
• The Cleveland Museum of Art. Handbook of the Cleveland Museum of Art/1969. Cleveland, OH: The Cleveland Museum of Art, 1969.
• “Twelve Additions to the Medieval Treasury.” The Bulletin of the Cleveland Museum of Art 59, no. 4 (April 1972): 87–111.

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.