Emperor ordering the martyrdom of a saint, historiated initial from a set of Choir books

An image of Illuminated manuscript. Cutting. Historiated initial from a set of Choir books. Production Place: Italy, Milan or Lodi. Parchment, gold, 145 x 135 mm, one fragmentary line of text ruled in pale brown ink and two fragmentary four-line musical staves ruled in red ink on reverse, circa 1395 to circa 1400.
CONTENTS: fragmentary text on reverse, […]tus est. DECORATION: Historiated initial in pale graded pink on burnished gold ground with floral and acanthus extensions into the margins which also contain gold balls and birds: [B] Emperor ordering the martyrdom of a saint who is hung from his wrists while two executioners place hot metal plates on his body.

Terms of use

These images are provided for non-commercial use under a Creative Commons License (BY-NC-ND). To license a high resolution version, please contact our image library who will discuss fees, terms and waivers.

Download this image

Creative commons explained - what it means, how you can use our's and other people's content.

Illuminated manuscript. Cutting. Historiated initial from a set of Choir books. Production Place: Italy, Milan or Lodi. Parchment, gold, 145 x 135 mm, one fragmentary line of text ruled in pale brown ink and two fragmentary four-line musical staves ruled in red ink on reverse, circa 1395 to circa 1400. CONTENTS: fragmentary text on reverse, […]tus est. DECORATION: Historiated initial in pale graded pink on burnished gold ground with floral and acanthus extensions into the margins which also contain gold balls and birds: [B] Emperor ordering the martyrdom of a saint who is hung from his wrists while two executioners place hot metal plates on his body.

Image data

Accession Number: MS McClean 201.13m
Photograph copyright © The Fitzwilliam Museum, Cambridge.
Photographer name: Andrew Morris
Image height: 1075 pixels
Image width: 1024 pixels
Processed with: Adobe Photoshop CS3 Windows
Filesize: 222.13kB

Key words

14th Century _WF_AdOK _WF_KWD _WF_OPAC _WF_OPAC_pending acanthus balls burnished choir book Christianity cutting decorative initial Early Renaissance emperor execution executioner Fitz_MSPB floral gold balls gold leaf golden balls historiated initial illuminated illumination inhabited initial initial Italian killing male manuscript margin martyrdom martyred martyrs miniature murdered music manuscript neum neume parchment religion religious Renaissance rulers saints torture tortured torturers Trecento

Citation for print

This page can be cited in the Harvard Bibliographic style using the text below:


            The Fitzwilliam Museum (2024)
            "Emperor ordering the martyrdom of a saint, historiated initial from a set of Choir books"
            Web page available at: https://data.fitzmuseum.cam.ac.uk/id/image/media-1792880577 Accessed: 2024-11-22 00:57:01

Citation for Wikipedia

To cite this page on Wikipedia you can use this code snippet:


            {{cite web|url=https://data.fitzmuseum.cam.ac.uk/id/image/media-1792880577
            |title=Emperor ordering the martyrdom of a saint, historiated initial from a set of Choir books
            |author=The Fitzwilliam Museum|accessdate=2024-11-22 00:57:01|publisher=The
            University of Cambridge}}

API call for this record

To call these data via our API (remember this needs to be authenticated) you can use this code snippet:

https://data.fitzmuseum.cam.ac.uk/api/v1/images/media-1792880577

Bootstrap HTML code for reuse

To use this as a simple code embed, copy this string:

<div class="text-center">
    <figure class="figure">
        <img src="https://data.fitzmuseum.cam.ac.uk/imagestore/portfolio/F25982D9_7CB9_CFFF_028E_8BBFC531887C/727/814/large_MS_McClean_201_13m_dc1.jpg"
        alt="Historiated initial from a set of Choir books"
        class="img-fluid" />
        <figcaption class="figure-caption text-info">Emperor ordering the martyrdom of a saint, historiated initial from a set of Choir books</figcaption>
    </figure>
</div>