Tátrai Vilmos szerk.: A Szépművészeti Múzeum közleményei 95. (Budapest, 2001)
SZÉPE, HELENA KATALIN: Civic and artistic identity in illuminated Venetian documents
The opening miniature to the prologue of the promissione of the doge (f. 3 lr) depicts him dressed in ducal robes and the camauro hat, receiving a standard of Saint Mark with the Contarini arms from the Lion of Mark. This scene, which emphasizes that the Doge's authority and Venetian law are divinely ordained, must refer to the actual inauguration in the Basilica of San Marco when the Doge was presented with one of eight red banners of Saint Mark depicting the lion, while the long silver trumpets of the trionfi were sounded. 15 A more elaborate inclusion of the banner is found in a miniature in the Promissione of Antonio Grimani of 1521, where Mark himself grants it to him. 16 These compilations of manuscripts are important as the earliest evidence of dogal documents, but I am interested here particularly in manuscripts created for presentation to the recipient of the new office, and to be retained by him. The first surviving illuminated mâependentpromissione manuscript is that of Michèle Morosini, who was doge for only a month, in 1382. This manuscript in the Marciana Library contains a bust-length profile portrait of the Doge, with his coat of arms in the lower border, and these miniatures have also been attributed to Giustino del fu Gherardino da Forli by d'Ancona. 17 In the promissione illuminated by Cristoforo Cortese for Francesco Foscari of 1423, the historiated initial has evolved to images of the kneeling Doge, presented by patron saints, receiving the manuscript from Saint Mark, or in adoration of the Virgin and Child, as in the promissione illuminated by Leonardo Bellini for Cristoforo Moro of 1462. 18 Such images of the doge with patron saints, kneeling in front of the Virgin can be found in the fourteenth century in the lunettes of monumental tombs of doges, for example, for Francesco Dandolo and Andrea Vendramin, and the so-called votive portraits painted specifically for the doge's palace in the late fifteenth-century, and that thepromissioni eventually compelled the doges to have produced for the Palazzo Ducale after 1501. 19 The first surviving illuminated commission} are found only from ca. 1462, but increasingly large numbers are more elaborately illuminated from the 1470s and 1480s, to peak in complexity and sometimes quality in the late 16 th century. In some cases the illumination of commissioni is highly formulaic. The illuminated page from a commissione granted to Ermolao Morosini as podestà of Brescia of 1540, now in the Museum of Fine Arts, Budapest (fig. 45), is by the so-called To. Ve Master, an 15 Böholm, L.,The Doge of Venice. The Symbols of State Power in the Renaissance, Gothenberg 1990, 134. 16 London, British Library, Add. Ms. 18,000. This illumination was first attributed to Benedetto Bordon by G. Mariani Canova, and is illustrated in Fortini Brown, P., Art and Life in Renaissance Venice, New York 1997, 77, fig. 50. 17 Levi d'Ancona, op.cit. (note 13) fig. 31. 18 Venice, Biblioteca Giustinian Recanati. Alessandro Galli in Miniature a Brera 1100-1422, ed. Boskovits, M.. Valgussa, G., Bollati, M., Milan 1997, 238-243; and London, British Library, Add. 15816. Giordana Mariani Canova in The Painted Page. Italian Renaissance Book Illumination 1450-1550, ed. Alexander, J.J.G., Munich 1994, 84-85, cat. 27. 19 Added to the promissione of Leonardo Loredan, of 1501. Goffen, R., Giovanni Bellini, New Haven 1989,99-106.
