The Caporali Missal (1469): Art, History and Details

The Caporali Missal (1469) is in the Cleveland Museum of Art collection. The museum's creator attribution is Bartolommeo Caporali (Italian, c. 1420–1503); Giapeco Caporali (Italian, d. 1478).

The work and its context

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

Called a missal, this manuscript served as a liturgical service book used by the priest at the altar during Mass. According to a colophon, an inscription on folio 400, the missal was made for the Franciscan church of San Francesco in Montone, near Perugia in the region of Umbria, in 1469. It was illuminated by Bartolomeo and Giapeco Caporali, two artist brothers who collaborated on the page decorations. The missal is opened here to the volume’s masterpiece, a two-page deluxe opening to the Canon of the Mass with a Calvary scene. The Canon introduces the most solemn part of the Mass during which the priest elevates and consecrates the Eucharistic bread and wine. Saint Francis kneels at the foot of the cross, attesting to the missal’s Franciscan use and affiliation.

Object facts

• Title: The Caporali Missal
• Date: 1469
• Creator attribution: Bartolommeo Caporali (Italian, c. 1420–1503); Giapeco Caporali (Italian, d. 1478)
• Culture: Italy, Perugia
• Type: Bound Volume
• Technique: Ink, tempera and gold on vellum; 400 folios
• Dimensions: Overall: 35 x 25 cm (13 3/4 x 9 13/16 in.)
• Collection: MED - Manuscript Illuminations
• Department: Medieval Art
• Accession number: 2006.154

A detail from the museum

Bartolomeo Caporali and his brother Giapeco shared a house and a workshop in Perugia.

Collection credit

John L. Severance Fund

Further reading listed by the museum

• Eikelmann, Renate, Holger A. Klein, Stephen N. Fliegel, and Virginia Brilliant. The Cleveland Museum of Art: Meisterwerke von 300 bis 1550. München: Hirmer, 2007.
• Cleveland Museum of Art, and Holger A. Klein. Sacred Gifts and Worldly Treasures: Medieval Masterworks from the Cleveland Museum of Art. Cleveland, Ohio: Cleveland Museum of Art, 2007.
• Fliegel, Stephen N. Resplendent Faith: Liturgical Treasuries of the Middle Ages. Kent, Ohio: Kent State University Press, 2009.

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.