Getty Research Journal

Abstract:

The Musée Antoine Vivenel in Compiègne, France, recently published the discovery of three miniatures from the Laudario of Sant’Agnese, one of the most ambitious fourteenth-century illuminated manuscripts. The Getty Museum assembled the majority of the known surviving leaves and cuttings in 2012 and 2013, but the Compiègne illuminations were not known at that time. This short text presents new findings related to the Laudario’s structure and offers a new interpretation of one of the surviving miniatures. At first glance, incorporating the Compiègne Initial S: The Ascension of Saint John the Evangelist at the beginning of the Laudario, as I propose, would present a problem with another cutting, an initial G in The Free Library of Philadelphia, traditionally thought to represent Saint John on Patmos. Separating Saint John’s feast across the Laudario does not fit with current scholarship on the manuscript’s arrangement, which follows the liturgical year by incorporating sanctorale and temporale feasts in order by date. Codicological evidence together with a careful reading of The Golden Legend reveals that the Philadelphia cutting in fact represents Saint Augustine. For the first time in a single place, this essay also presents evidence for the subject matter of missing portions of the manuscript based on the hymns found on the backs of surviving leaves.