Antiphoner: MS 44

Titles

Antiphoner

Maker(s)

Scribe: Ballo, Giovanni (Iohannes Ballus)
Artists: Battista Rosa, Giovanni and assistants

Entities

• Antiphoner
• Dominican use

Categories

• Illuminated manuscript
• Manuscript

Description

PHYSICAL DESCRIPTION: Parchment, ii paper flyleaves + 161 fols. (foliated i, 1-160) + i paper flyleaf, 662 x 440 mm (444 x 286 mm), 5 four-line musical staves ruled in red ink, 5 text lines in between ruled in pale black ink, equivalent in all to 30 lines, one leaf lost after fol. 28.

BINDING: Seventeenth century, brown stained paper over wooden boards, sewn on six supports, leather spine and corner pieces nailed to boards, remains of metal furniture (probably chain attachments) on upper and lower covers

CONTENTS: fols. 1v-129v Antiphons, versicles and responsories for the Temporal from Trinity Sunday to the 22nd Sunday after Trinity (the leaf after fol. 28, which would have contained the beginning of Corpus Christi, has been excised)
fols. 129v-60v Antiphons, versicles and responsories for the Dedication of a Church.

DECORATION: Historiated initial with full border frame containing large clumps of acanthus foliage set against rinceaux ground with framed corner miniatures: fol. 2r Antiphon for the psalms for First Vespers of Trinity Sunday, [O, 11 ll.] Holy Trinity with God the Father and God the Son seated on clouds with a globe between them, and with the Holy Spirit as a Dove above them, the border originally contained four framed corner miniatures of saints, two of which have been cut out, those that survive have three-quarter length figures of Saints Dominic and Peter Martyr, in the middle of the top border a cartouche with heads of putti encloses the shield of the Dominican Order, surmounted by a crown, in the lower border a similar cartouche contains the arms of Pignatelli surmounted by a coronet.

Two initials sketched out in leadpoint, with borders of the type described above, but without sketches for the historiation: fol. 60v First Sunday after the Octave of Trinity Sunday, [L, 9 ll.] with two-sided border sketched out; fol. 130r Dedication of a Church, [framed space left for initial S, 11 ll.] with full border sketched out.

ORNAMENTATION: One large gold framed border block containing gold, green, blue and orange acanthus leaves on dark blue ground running up the full length of the outer border at the opening of Lauds for Trinity Sunday (fol. 23v); gold, red and blue initials [4-6 ll.] with ornamental foliage in their stems, set against coloured foliage grounds in gold frames (e.g. fols. 4v, 23v, 54r, 83r).

Notes

History note: Made for the Dominican church of Santa Maria della Sanità in Naples under the patronage of Fabrizio Pignatelli, Marquess of Cerchiara and from 1600 Prince of Noia: Hunc librum una cum ceteris Illustrissimus et eccellentissimus Dominus Fabritius Pignatellus nomine Princeps, grandi pecunia, sed maiore pietate, in Beatam Virginem Sanitatis, Cura et diligentia R. P. F. Dominici Guglielmini Neapolitani, opera uero ac labore Fratris Johannis Balli fieri mandauit (fol. 160v), the date below, probably mdciiii as in Fitzwilliam Museum, MS 45, has been erased; passed at unknown dates to San Domenico Maggiore, Naples, and then to the Marquess of Lorne, John George Edward Henry Douglas Sutherland Campbell (1845-1914), who became ninth Duke of Argyll in 1900; purchased for the Fitzwilliam in December 1888, together with MSS 43 and 45, from the bookseller, Kerr and Richardson, Queen Street, Glasgow, for £15 (note found inside MS 43 and now kept on file).