Description
This volume is primarily remarkable for its excellently preserved early (but not original) binding, as well as the peculiar style of its miniatures. The manuscript opens with an unusual, icon-like prefatory image of the Virgin and Child, possibly added at an early stage for use in private devotion, and is followed by Evangelist portraits facing ornate headpieces. In style, the image is similar to an icon at the Benaki Museum in Athens (inv. 41420) and may, like it, date to the fourteenth century. This is a very unusual subject for a pictorial frontispiece to a Gospel Book, and must have served as a devotional image. This, along with the other illuminations in the manuscript, are important examples of non-Constantinopolitan Byzantine art.
Parent Object