Treasures of a Lost Art: Italian Manuscript Painting of the Middle Ages and Renaissance

This scholarly catalogue assembles nearly 150 leaves, cuttings and illuminated manuscript fragments from the collection of Robert Lehman, one of the 20th century's leading collectors of medieval and Renaissance Italian manuscripts. There's little in the way of introduction or overview; the focus, instead, is on the sumptuous color plates from major illumination schools in southern Italy, Umbria, Tuscany, and Lombardy, among others, along with detailed scholarly opinions and context. The 15th century Martyrdom of Saint Agatha in an Initial D by Sano di Pietro, for instance, features a group of colorfully robed men gathered around a bare-chested Saint Agatha; one of the men grips her bleeding breast with an iron tong. The accompanying text describes the fragment's history--the volume of its origin, the dispersal of its pages, and its eventual reconstruction in the last 10 years. With their bright renditions of gore and glory, bordered in elaborate, gilded frameworks, these antique images continue to transfix the viewer as both art and history. This lovingly crafted volume ensures they will continue to enchant for many years to come. 169 illustrations