Partial Leaf from a Latin Bible: Initial I[n principio] with the Marriage at Cana (c. 1260–1270): Art, History and Details

Partial Leaf from a Latin Bible: Initial I[n principio] with the Marriage at Cana (c. 1260–1270) is in the Cleveland Museum of Art collection.

The work and its context

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

The illuminator of this initial placed three small scenes one above another to suggest the vertical stem of the initial I, here standing for the introductory passages of the Gospel of Saint John, In principio erat verbum . . . (In the beginning was the word . . .). Such initials have been called "ladder initials" because the individual scenes were arranged one on top of the other to be read in sequence. Each group of figures stands beneath a cusped gable and depicts scenes from the Marriage at Cana. At the top, Christ and the Virgin speak together; at the center, Christ tells the attendant to fill the jars; and below, the banquet proceeds after the miraculous change of water into wine. The present leaf (actually a fragment) comes from a large lectern bible, which probably existed in several volumes because of its size. In the 1100s and 1200s, the large multivolume bible was a standard form used for refectory readings at meals or else kept in a library for reference.

Object facts

• Title: Partial Leaf from a Latin Bible: Initial I[n principio] with the Marriage at Cana
• Date: c. 1260–1270
• Culture: Northeastern France, Cambrai, 13th century
• Type: Manuscript
• Technique: ink, tempera, and gold on vellum
• Dimensions: Sheet: 42 x 15.3 cm (16 9/16 x 6 in.)
• Collection: MED - Manuscript Illuminations
• Department: Medieval Art
• Accession number: 1952.565

Collection credit

Purchase from the J. H. Wade Fund

Further reading listed by the museum

• Stoneman, William P. "Medieval, Renaissance, and Modern Manuscripts: A Handlist of the Collection of C.H. St. John Hornby." In Collecting, Collectors, and the Book Trade: Essays in Honour of Richard A. Linenthal, edited by Ed Potten and Satoko Tokunaga, 364-393. Turnhout: Brepols, 2026.

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.