Leaf from Gospels: the Virgin and Child

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.

Exhibitions

• Early Christian and Byzantine Art. Baltimore Museum of Art, Baltimore. 1947.
• Eureka! The Archimedes Palimpsest. The Walters Art Gallery, Baltimore; The Field Museum, Chicago. 1999-2000.

Provenance Sophia Negroponte, Constantinople [1]. Purchased by the Russian Skete of St. Andrew, Karies, Mt. Athos, 1900 [2]. Purchased by Thomas Whittemore, Paris, after 1902. Purchased by Henry Walters, Baltimore; by bequest to Walters Art Museum, 1931. [1] Seen by A. Papadopoulos-Kerameus in 1885 [2] Cod. 754 in its library; seen there by C. R. Gregory on March 26, 1902

Credit Acquired by Henry Walters