Medallion from the Border of a Latin Bible: The Expulsion of Adam and Eve from Paradise (early 1300s): Art, History and Details

Medallion from the Border of a Latin Bible: The Expulsion of Adam and Eve from Paradise (early 1300s) is in the Cleveland Museum of Art collection. The museum's creator attribution is Primo Miniatore di San Domenico (Italian).

The work and its context

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

As revealed by their subjects and blank versos (reverse sides), these medallions were undoubtedly excised from a Genesis page in a large lectern Bible. Typically, such medallions would have appeared in conjunction with a large-scale historiated initial I running the full length of the text and introducing the book of Genesis: In principio creativit Deus caelum et terram (In the beginning God created heaven and earth). Such schemes of page layout and decoration were common features of Bibles produced in Bolognese workshops and destined for wealthy religious institutions of the Emilian region, for which Bologna was the artistic and intellectual center.

Object facts

• Title: Medallion from the Border of a Latin Bible: The Expulsion of Adam and Eve from Paradise
• Date: early 1300s
• Creator attribution: Primo Miniatore di San Domenico (Italian)
• Culture: Italy, early 14th century
• Type: Manuscript
• Technique: tempera on vellum
• Dimensions: Diameter: 7 cm (2 3/4 in.)
• Collection: MED - Manuscript Illuminations
• Department: Medieval Art
• Accession number: 2003.170

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.