The renaissance of a twelfth-century papal manuscript fragment in Medici Florence: a new reading of Fra Angelico’s David

Abstract

Of the small corpus of works on vellum and paper attributed to the Tuscan Dominican friar and artist Fra Angelico (c.1400–55) and his circle, one drawing has been repeatedly singled out as widely accepted to be by his hand: King David Playing a Psaltery (c.1430) (now British Museum, London). The vellum leaf on which Fra Angelico drew features text on its verso that has until now been misunderstood as a fragment of a fifteenth-century breviary, leading it to be positioned simply as an example of his work as an illuminator. This article demonstrates that despite this misunderstanding, there is indeed an important relationship between the text and image on this sheet. The text is a fragment of a twelfth-century choir psalter and is significant as perhaps the oldest surviving evidence of the liturgy of the Papal Curia. Through a combination of palaeographical, liturgical, and art-historical analysis, I identify the leaf as a central Italian fragment dating to c.1150–80, which Fra Angelico encountered as a result of the presence of the Papal Curia in Florence during the papacy of Eugene IV, from 1434 to 1436 and again from 1439 to 1443. Stylistic and iconographic analysis demonstrates that Fra Angelico deliberately evoked the antique mode of the prefatory miniature in response to the age of the leaf, making the drawing an early example of the Renaissance desire to emulate classical models, received through a Carolingian filter. The close relationship between the David drawing and Fra Angelico’s work for Cosimo de’ Medici’s cell in San Marco—after the latter’s return to Florence from exile in 1434, supported by Eugene IV—is identified for the first time. The date of the drawing is refined from c.1430 to c.1435, the year Fra Angelico and his community moved from Fiesole to San Marco in Florence.

Keywords:

• Fra Angelico
• drawing
• manuscript
• psalter
• King David
• Cosimo de’ Medici
• Florence
• liturgy

Acknowledgements

This research was generated by my interrupted time as 2020 Harold Wright Scholar in the Department of Prints and Drawings at the British Museum, London, and much of it was conducted during several lockdowns in Melbourne, Victoria, Australia, during the COVID-19 pandemic. It would not have been possible without the generosity and expertise of colleagues near and far. I record my deep gratitude to Hugo Chapman (Simon Sainsbury Keeper of Prints & Drawings, British Museum), Michelle Brown, and Miranda Fyfield for expertise shared in art history, palaeography, and Latin. I acknowledge particularly liturgist Stan Metheny, who identified several of the hymns in the verso text and clarified the meaning of several rubrics. Any errors that remain are my own. Oliver House (Special Collections, Bodleian Libraries, University of Oxford), Christine Nelson and Tim Gress (The Morgan Library & Museum), Anna Witty (Adelaide Theological Library), Matthew Martin and Susan Millard (University of Melbourne), Daniel Wee (then at Monash University, now State Library Victoria), and Mitchell Whitelaw (Australian National University) provided access to essential library resources. I thank the committee of the Harold Wright and Sarah & William Holmes scholarships and the executors of the Colin Holden Trust for giving me the opportunity to study at the British Museum.

Notes

1 Laurence Kanter and Pia Palladino, Fra Angelico, exh. cat. (New York: Metropolitan Museum of Art; and London: Yale University Press, 2005); Magnolia Scudieri and Sara Giocomelli, Fra Giovanni Angelico: Pittore miniatore o miniatore pittore?, exh. cat. (Florence: Giunti, 2007); Laura Alidori Battaglia, ‘An Unpublished Miniature from the Circle of Fra Angelico’, Burlington Magazine 151, no. 1277 (2009): 518–25; Laurence Kanter, ‘A New Drawing by Fra Angelico’, Yale University Art Gallery Bulletin, European Art (2016): 12–21, n. 1 passim.

2 Inv. no. 1895,0915.437. Pen and brown ink, with purple wash, over stylus indications, some ruled, on vellum with the blank areas such as the halo burnished (?), 197 × 178 mm, https://www.britishmuseum.org/collection/object/P_1895-0915-437, accessed 8 November, 2023. John Pope-Hennessy attributed it first to Fra Angelico’s assistant Zanobi Strozzi (1428–65), but in the second edition of his publication attributed it to Fra Angelico himself, citing its affinity with a gradual decorated by Angelico, dated c.1424/25–28/30: Florence, Museo di San Marco, MS 558; Scudieri and Giacomelli, Fra Giovanni Angelico, 58–111, repr. (colour). John Pope-Hennessy, Fra Angelico (London: Phaidon, 1952), 205; 2nd ed. (1974), 235. Writing in between these two editions, Luigi Grassi affirmed the Strozzi attribution; Luigi Grassi, I disegni italiani del Trecento e Quattrocento Scuole fiorentina, senese, marchigiana, umbra (Venice: Sodalizio del Libro, [1960]), no. 21.

3 Bernard Berenson, The Drawings of the Florentine Painters, Classified, Criticised and Studied as Documents in the History and Appreciation of Tuscan Art, with a Copious Catalogue Raisonné, 2 vols (New York: E. P. Dutton & Co., 1903), I: no. 162, pl. 2: 3–6; II: 9; repr. (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1938), 2: no. 162, fig. 17: 16–17, repr.

4 A. E. Popham and Philip Pouncey, Italian Drawings in the Department of Prints and Drawings in the British Museum: The Fourteenth and Fifteenth Century, 2 vols (London: British Museum, 1950), I: no. 2: 2; II, pl. I, repr.

5 Pia Palladino, entry no. 26, in Kanter and Palladino, Fra Angelico, 133–4, repr. (colour); Claire Van Cleave, Master Drawings of the Italian Renaissance ([London]: British Museum Press, 2007), 34, repr. 35; L. Melli, ‘Fra Giovanni Angelico disegnatore’, in Beato Angelico. L’alba del Rinascimento, ed. Alessandro Zuccari, Giovanni Morello, and Gerado di Simone (Milan: Skira, 2009), 63–70, repr. (colour) 64; Maria Maddalena Rook, entry no. 10, in Fra Angelico to Leonardo: Italian Renaissance Drawings, exh. cat., ed. Hugo Chapman and Marzia Faietti (London: British Museum Press, 2010), 110–11. The exceptions are Pope-Hennessy and Chapman, who both accepted the point made by Popham and Pouncey without commenting on its ramifications; Pope-Hennessy, Fra Angelico (1952), 205; (1974), 35; Hugo Chapman, entry no. 2, in Old Master Drawings from the Malcolm Collection, exh. cat., ed. Martin Royalton-Kisch, Hugo Chapman, and Stephen Coppel (London: British Museum Press, 1996), 23, repr. (colour).

6 Giovanni Verri and Janet Ambers, ‘Revealing Stratigraphy’, in Italian Renaissance Drawings: Technical Examination and Analysis, ed. Janet Ambers, Catherine Higgitt and David Saunders (London: British Museum Press, 2010), 89–102, at 91; Bernhard Bischoff, Latin Palaeography: Antiquity & the Middle Ages, trans. Dáibhí Ó Cróinín and David Ganz (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1990), 22.

7 Giovanni Verri, Sakoto Tanimoto, and Catherine Higgitt, ‘Inks and Washes’, in Ambers et al., Italian Renaissance Drawings, 57–75, at 73. On pigments in medieval manuscripts, see Stella Panayotova, ed., Colour: The Art and Science of Illuminated Manuscripts, exh. cat. (London: Harvey Miller, 2016).

8 Armando Petrucci, ‘Censimento dei codici dei secoli Xl–XII. Istruzioni per la datazione’, Studi medievali, ser. 3, 9 (1968): 1115–26, at 1121–22.

9 Giulio Batelli, Lezioni di paleografia (Città del Vaticano: [Libreria editrice vaticana], 1949); Petrucci, ‘Censimento dei codici dei secoli Xl–XII’, 1122; Bischoff, Latin Palaeography, 125. See Franciscus Ehrle SJ and Paulus Liebyaert, Specimina codicum latinorum Vaticanorum collegerunt (Bonn: A. Marcus & E. Weber, 1912), pl. 35, for an example of this script in a manuscript produced within the ‘circle of the curia’ (according to Bischoff, Latin Palaeography, 125, n. 118) that is dated between 1099 and 1118, https://archive.org/details/speciminacodicvm00ehrluoft, accessed 20 August 2020. For examples of the script in manuscripts produced in northern Italy, see Melbourne, State Library Victoria, RARESF 091 B63, http://search.slv.vic.gov.au/permalink/f/1cl35st/SLV_VOYAGER485196, accessed 27 August 2020; and London, British Library, MS Add. 34209, http://www.bl.uk/manuscripts/FullDisplay.aspx?ref=Add_MS_34209, accessed 1 September 2022.

10 Petrucci, ‘Censimento dei codici dei secoli Xl–XII’, 1123–24.

11 Ibid., 1122.

12 Ibid., 1123–24.

13 Ibid, 1124.

14 H. E. J. Cowdrey, ‘Pope Gregory VII (1073–85) and the Liturgy’, Journal of Theological Studies n.s. 55, no. 1 (2004): 55–83, at 57–58.

15 There is an abbreviator over the final letter of ‘pentecoste’, indicating a missing case ending, but the word is correctly written in the ablative without an addition.

16 An abbreviator sign is not present, but grammatically the word must be ‘roboatur’ (sic, ‘reboatur’), not ‘roboat’.

17 This appears to be a scribal error involving the transposition of two letters: the word should likely read ‘Veniet’ not ‘Venite’.

18 The ‘i’ is missing due to the trimming of the leaf.

19 Dom Anselmo Lentini OSB, Hymni instaurandi Breviarii Romani (Città del Vaticano, 1968), 10, n. 2, https://archive.org/details/HymniInstBR1968/, accessed 15 November 2020.

20 Palladino, in Kanter and Palladino, Fra Angelico, 134; Van Cleave, Master Drawings, 35.

21 John Harper, The Forms and Orders of Western Liturgy from the Tenth to the Eighteenth Century (Oxford: Clarendon, 1991), 61–63, 67–108. The word ‘breviarium’ means ‘abridgement’, but also ‘compendium’ or ‘summary’. The oldest known extant manuscript that names itself as a breviary in its incipit and contains the complete text needed to perform the Divine Office (including the psalter) is monastic in origin: it was made c.1099–1105 at the Benedictine abbey of Montecassino; Paris, Bibliothèque Mazarine, MS 364, https://mazarinum.bibliotheque-mazarine.fr/records/item/2565, accessed 15 May 2020.

22 Cowdrey, ‘Pope Gregory VII’, 55.

23 Ibid., 57. The original Latin text is reproduced in Pierre-Marie Gy, ‘L’unification liturgique de l’occident et la liturgie de la curie romaine’, Revue des Sciences philosophiques et théologiques 59, no. 4 (1975): 601–12, at 606.

24 Cowdrey, ‘Pope Gregory VII’, 60.

25 Ibid., 69–70. Stephen J. P. Van Dijk OFM and Joan Hazelden Walker, The Origins of the Modern Roman Liturgy: The Liturgy of the Papal Court and the Franciscan Order in the Thirteenth Century (Westminster, Maryland: Darton, Longman & Todd, 1960), 97, 267–68.

26 See Cowdrey, ‘Pope Gregory VII’, for a summary of these texts; and G. Morin, ‘Règlements inédits du Pape Saint Grégoire VII pour les chanoines réguliers’, Revue Benedictine 18 (1901): 177–83, for the Latin text of Gregory’s own texts.

27 Morin, ‘Règlements inédits’, 179, discussed and translated in Cowdrey, ‘Pope Gregory VII’, 60–61.

28 Further study of the forms of incipit statement associated with the curial liturgy is desirable: ‘Mos, moris, m.’, in Charlton T. Lewis and Charles Short, A Latin Dictionary founded on Andrews’ Edition of Freund’s Latin Dictionary, Revised, Enlarged, and in Great Part Rewritten (Oxford: Clarendon, 1897), 1167–68; and ‘Consuetudo, consuetudinis, f.’, in ibid., 440–41.

29 Cowdrey, ‘Pope Gregory VII’; Morin, ‘Règlements inédits’; Van Dijk and Hazelden, Origins, appx 42, 528–42.

30 Van Dijk and Hazelden, Origins, 75.

31 The two Rules of the Franciscan Order indicate the difficulties: The Earlier Rule (1209–10/1221) directed friars to recite the Divine Office ‘secundum consuetudinem clericorum’, ‘according to the custom of clerics’. The Later Rule (1223) updated this to ‘ordinem sanctae Romanae Ecclesiae’, ‘the ordo of the Holy Roman Church’. Neither specified the curia itself, though the Franciscans are believed by most scholars to have followed and preserved the curial rite; Regis J. Armstrong, J. A. W. Hellmann, and William J. Short, eds, Francis of Assisi: Early Documents, 3 vols: Vol. 1: The Founder (New York: New City, 1999), 65; ‘Regula non bullata’, Fontes Francescani, ed. Enrico Menesto and Stefano Brufani (Assisi: Porziuncola, 1995), 187–88. ‘The Later Rule’, The Founder, 101; ‘Regula bullata’, Fontes Francescani, 174.

32 Two of the preeminent scholars in this endeavour, Michel Andrieu and Stephen J. P. Van Dijk OFM, engaged in a lengthy published disagreement about four such books, with Andrieu identifying two thirteenth-century sacramentaries as originating in the Roman curia, but denying the curial origins of two thirteenth-century breviaries used by Franciscans, and Van Dijk arguing the opposite in both regards. For an overview of their argument (albeit from Van Dijk’s point of view), see Stephen J. P. Van Dijk OFM, ‘The Legend of “The Missal of the Papal Chapel”’, Sacris erudiri 8 (1956): 76–142. The 1365 missal believed by both Andrieu and Van Dijk to represent the liturgy prescribed by the ordinal of Innocent III is Paris, Bibliothèque nationale de France (BnF), lat. 4162A, https://gallica.bnf.fr/ark:/12148/btv1b9066557b/f3.image, accessed 14 February 2021.

33 Marica S. Tacconi, Cathedral and Civic Ritual in Late Medieval and Renaissance Florence: The Service Books of Santa Maria del Fiore. Cambridge Studies in Palaeography and Codicology 12 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2005), 60–62.

34 Ibid., 69–71.

35 Ibid., 251.

36 James Haar and John Nádas, ‘The Medici, the Signoria, the Pope: Sacred Polyphony in Florence, 1432–1448’, Recercare 20, nos 1–2 (2008): 25–93, at 29.

37 Riccardo Fubini and Sarah-Louise Raillard, ‘Cosimo de’ Medici’s Regime: His Rise to Power (1434)’, Revue française de science politique (English ed.) 64, no. 6 (2014): 81–97, at 81–82.

38 Oxford, Bodleian Libraries, MS Canon liturg. 379, Italy, breviary c.1300, calendar and lectionary 1452, https://medieval.bodleian.ox.ac.uk/catalog/manuscript_3061, accessed 24 September 2020; Otto Pacht and J. J. G. Alexander, 3 vols: Vol. 2: Italian School Illuminated Manuscripts in the Bodleian Library, Oxford (Oxford: Clarendon, 1970), no. 261; Van Dijk and Hazelden Walker, Origins, 145.

39 Ambers et al., Italian Renaissance Drawings, 124.

40 For the breviary, see note 19. The psalter: Getty, Ms. Ludwig IX 1 (83.ML.97), 1153, f. 140^v, http://www.getty.edu/art/collection/objects/103060/unknown-maker-inhabited-initial-b-italian-1153/), accessed 15 November 2020.

41 Inv. nos 95E, 96E, 98E, 99E and 100E. Pen and brown ink and wash on parchment, 115 × 38 mm (95E), 110 × 35 mm (96E), 38 × 34 mm (98E), 36 × 35 mm (99E) and 36 × 35 mm (100E); Kanter, ‘New Drawing by Fra Angelico,’ 14–15, repr. (colour). Inv. no. B.A. 1956, 2015.1. Pen and brown ink and wash, with traces of black ink, on parchment, diameter 37 mm; Kanter, ‘New Drawing by Fra Angelico’, 12; https://artgallery.yale.edu/collections/objects/200958, accessed 22 August 2020, repr. (colour).

42 Scuderi and Giacomelli, Fra Giovanni Angelico, 150. Kanter, ‘New Drawing by Fra Angelico’, 12–21.

43 Battaglia, ‘Unpublished Miniature’, 523.

44 Giacomelli suggests that the roundel that has been pricked for transfer was a model for Florence, Museo di San Marco, MS 533, f. 213^r, though as Kanter notes, the relationship is not straightforward; Scudieri and Giacomelli. Fra Giovanni Angelico, 150, 176 repr. (colour); Kanter, ‘New Drawing by Fra Angelico’, 16–17, repr. (colour).

45 Jenny Bescoby and Judith Rayner, ‘Supports and Preparations’, in Ambers et al., Italian Renaissance Drawings, 23–37, at 33.

46 Ambers et al., Italian Renaissance Drawings, 124.

47 Museo di San Marco, MS 558, f. 33^v; Hennessy, Fra Angelico, 235; Scudieri and Giacomelli Fra Giovanni Angelico, 58–111 (esp. 58–59, 97), repr. (colour).

48 Ibid., 76, repr. (colour).

49 Inv. no. P000015/001, tempera on wood panel, 1623 × 1915 mm; https://www.museodelprado.es/en/the-collection/art-work/la-anunciacion/f8e45a6f-7645-4e53-9fd5-cbdae7e8faac, accessed 30 August 2020, repr. (colour); inv. no. 77.1.1, gold leaf and tempera on wood panel, 330 × 270 mm unframed; https://www.dia.org/art/collection/object/annunciatory-angel-24766, accessed 30 August 2020, repr. (colour). As suggested in the BM catalogue entry, see 25F in Kanter and Palladino, Fra Angelico, 121–32, repr. 128.

50 Kanter and Palladino, Fra Angelico, fig. 109, 187 repr. (colour), and in detail as figs 113, 188.

51 The project to attribute manuscript illuminations to Fra Angelico and his circle (including his teacher Lorenzo Monaco) is an ongoing one, but there is wide agreement at least about a group of choirbooks, graduals, and psalters made for his community at San Marco in the later part of his life. These are discussed and reproduced in Scudieri and Giacomelli, Fra Giovanni Angelico.

52 Museo di San Marco, MS 530, f. 135^v; Scudieri and Giacomelli, Fra Giovanni Angelico, 168, repr. (colour).

53 Museo di San Marco, MS 531, ff. 39^r, 132^r; Scudieri and Giacomelli, Fra Giovanni Angelico, 170, 146, repr. (colour).

54 Museo di San Marco: Psalter II, MS 530, c.1450, ff. 43^r, 70^v, 86^v; Scudieri and Giacomelli, Fra Giovanni Angelico, 146, 168, repr. (colour); Psalter I, MS 531, c.1450, f. 82^v; Scudieri and Giacomelli, Fra Giovanni Angelico, 171, repr. (colour).

55 Museo di San Marco, Psalter II, MS 530, c.1450, f. 172^v; Scudieri and Giacomelli, Fra Giovanni Angelico, 167, repr. (colour).

56 Museo di San Marco, MS 530, f. 43^r; Scudieri and Giacomelli 2007, 146, repr. (colour).

57 Inv. no. 1975.I.264. Pen and brown ink, brush and brown wash (the blade of the sword in pen and darker brown ink), 193 × 170 mm; https://www.metmuseum.org/art/collection/search/459466, accessed 30 August 2020, repr. (colour); Kanter and Palladino, Fra Angelico, as ‘Fra Angelico’, no. 23 (entry by Palladino), 114–15, repr. (colour); Anna Forlani Tempesti, no. 64, as ‘A follower of Fra Angelico’, ‘Justice(?)’, in The Robert Lehman Collection, Vol. 5: Italian Fifteenth- to Seventeenth-Century Drawings, 15 vols (New York: Metropolitan Museum of Art in association with Princeton University Press, 1991), repr. (colour). An interesting later example of a similar crown outside Fra Angelico’s œuvre is found in the depiction of the young David slaying Goliath in the Florentine Picture Chronicle, created c.1470–75 by artists in the circle of Baccio Baldini, also in the BM collection: inv. no. 1889,0527.74. Pen and brown ink and brown wash over black chalk, 326 × 226 mm; https://www.britishmuseum.org/collection/object/P_1889-0527-74, accessed 23 August 2020, repr. (colour).

58 Scudieri, in Kanter and Palladino, Fra Angelico, 177–89; 186; repr. figs 106, 184.

59 Kanter and Palladino, Fra Angelico, 134. On the forms and history of psalter illumination, see Robert G. Calkins, Illuminated Books of the Middle Ages (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1983), 207–25.

60 Florence, Archivio dell’Opera di Santa Maria del Fiore, Cod. N.2.n.3, f. 3^v; Tacconi, Cathedral and Civic Ritual, pl. 2, 315 (repr. in colour).

61 Utrecht, Universiteitsbibliotheek, MS Bibl. Rhenotraiectinae I Nr 32, Rheims?, c.820–30, https://psalter.library.uu.nl/, accessed 27 March 2021; London, British Library, Harley MS 603, Canterbury?, c.1020, http://www.bl.uk/manuscripts/FullDisplay.aspx?ref=harley_ms_603, accessed 15 March 2021; Cambridge, Trinity College, MS R.17.1, Canterbury, c.1150, https://mss-cat.trin.cam.ac.uk/viewpage.php?index=1229, accessed 16 March 2021.

62 Rosamund McKitterick is a widely published authority on this subject, e.g., Rosamund McKitterick, History and Memory in the Carolingian World (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2004).

63 Vatican City, Biblioteca Apostolica Vaticana, Vat. Lat. 3868, Corvey, c.820–30, https://digi.vatlib.it/view/MSS_Vat.lat.3868, accessed 21 August 2020; C. R. Dodwell, Anglo-Saxon Gestures and the Roman Stage (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2000), 1–21.

64 Tacconi, Cathedral and Civic Ritual, 13.

65 Cividale del Friuli, Museo Archeologico Nazionale, Archivi e Biblioteca, codex CXXXVI, https://www.librideipatriarchi.it/en/books/egberts-psalter-codex-gertrudianus/, accessed 12 October 2020; see also Cowdrey, ‘Pope Gregory VII’, 59.

66 Inv. no. 1920,0214.1.2. Pen and brown ink, brown and blue wash, on vellum, 343 × 264 mm (covers); https://www.britishmuseum.org/collection/object/P_1920-0214-1-2, accessed 28 August 2020, repr. (colour); Hugo Chapman, no. 25 in Chapman and Faietti, Fra Angelico to Leonardo, 146–49, repr. (colour).

67 Verri et al., ‘Inks and Washes’, 72–73; Genevieve Verdigel, ‘Colore in Disegno: A Reappraisal of the Use of Color in Fifteenth-century Draftsmanship in the Veneto’, Master Drawings 58, no. 2 (2020): 148–68, at 154–58.

68 Verri et al., ‘Inks and Washes’, 72–73.

69 For example, Paris, BnF, NAF 2453, Giron le Courtais, Milan, c.1370–80, https://gallica.bnf.fr/ark:/12148/btv1b550063539/, accessed 4 May 2021; and Cambridge, Fitzwilliam Museum, Ms 43–1950, Speculum humanae salvatoris, Tuscany or northern Italy, c.1370–90. Nigel Morgan, ‘Modelling in Manuscript Painting c. 1050–c. 1500’, in Panayotova, Colour, 220–45, at 224–25, n. 12, cat. no. 60, 236–37 (repr. 237).

70 Stella Panayotova, ‘Colour in Illuminated Manuscripts’, in Panayotova, Colour, 14–25, at 18.

71 Nigel Morgan, cat. no. 54, in Panayotova, Colour, 217–18; repr. I.4, 18.

72 Hugo Chapman, ‘The Development of Drawing during the Italian Renaissance’, in Chapman and Faietti, Fra Angelico to Leonardo, 46–64, at 48–51.

73 Andrew Butterfield, ‘New Evidence for the Iconography of David in Quattrocento Florence’, I Tatti Studies in the Italian Renaissance 6 (1995): 115–33.