Arms, a Saint and Inperial Sedendo Fra Piu` Stelle: the Illuminator of Mod A
Arms, A Saint and Inperial sedendo fra piu` stelle: The Illuminator of Mod A JASON STOESSEL Some 600 years ago a north Italian illuminator sat decorating the parchment leaves of a collection of mainly French- texted polyphonic songs.1 His task was to provide a decorated initial for each song, motet, or piece of sacred music using gold leaf with red, green, blue, and rose-pink paints. He responded to certain texts by adorning their margins with small, often entertaining images of people or animals that art historians call drolleries. In the margin of Jacob de 1 Senleches’s En ce gracieux temps, in which the poet recalls the nightin- gale’s song interrupted by the raucous call of the cuckoo, our illuminator painted two birds.2 For another song, in which the poet pledges to serve This article has benefited from access to the D´epartement des Manuscrits and the D´epartement des Monnaies, M´edailles et Antiques, at the Bibliothe`que Nationale de France, the Biblioteca Estense Universitaria of Modena, the Warburg Institute of London, and the Interlibrary Loans Department of Dixson Library, University of New England, Armidale. I especially thank Giuliano Di Bacco, Margaret Bent, Rex Eakins, Leofranc Holford- Strevens, and the anonymous peer-reviewers for their contribu- tions. For advice on medieval astrology and Italian manuscript illumination, I thank David Juste and Peter Kidd respectively. 1 The most recent inventory and study of Mod A is found in Anne Stone, The Man- uscript Modena, Biblioteca Estense, a.M.5.24: Commentary (Lucca: Lim Editrice, 2005). Mod A appears in facsimile as Il codice a.M.5.24 (ModA), Ars Nova–Nuova Serie I/a (Facsimile) (Lucca: Libreria Musicale Italiana, 2003).
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