Natureza Morta com Manuscrito Iluminado (Still Life of an Illuminated Manuscript) - Anônimo, Provavelmente Holandês

Natureza Morta com Manuscrito Iluminado (Still Life of an Illuminated Manuscript) - Anônimo, Provavelmente Holandês
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Against a stark black background, a monumentally scaled illuminated manuscript is the sole subject matter of this fascinating panel painting. The manuscript is staged in a captured moment in which its pages open to reveal its richly ornamented text and illumination. Rather than serve as descriptive or ornamental iconography in a larger narrative, it alone is the subject of the picture, a simultaneous practice in religious devotion and careful artistic description. Ornate and gilded fictive Latin, a score of music, and an illumination take up the entirety of the picture plane. Although partly obscured, a skull and a foot emerging from a red cloak readily identify the illumination as the Crucifixion of Christ with John the Evangelist standing beside the cross. The margin around it is decorated with gold leaf upon which exquisite strewn flowers and insects cast their shadows, some of which refer specifically to the crucifixion, notably the columbine, symbolizing the Holy Spirit and the Passion, whereas the daisy is associated with the Virgin Mary, and the butterfly, an emblem of the redemption of the soul.1 The book is thus a liturgical manuscript, most probably a missal, and executed in the wake of the great manuscript illuminations produced in Ghent and Bruges from the 14th to 16th centuries.