Kuno Francke Professor of German Art & Culture
Paradies bei Soest
Johannes-Libellus
Westphalia, ca. 1380
These leaves are exceptionally rare portions of an illustrated sequence, the rhyming Latin poem which followed the Alleluia at Mass. This particular example alludes to the opening of the Gospel of John. In addition to the illustrations for the opening of the text, each verse includes an illustrated initial. The entire page was designed and decorated by the Dominican nuns of Paradies bei Soest, for whom John the Evangelist was of special importance. These leaves inspired my recent book, co-authored with an historian, a musicologist, and another art historian. Such interdisciplinary scholarship is demanded by manuscripts such as these.
15.5 L x 11.25 W (in)
MS Typ 1095, Purchase from Jörn Günther Antiquariat, 2003