Historiated Initial ‘C’ showing Christ in Glory from a Gradual for Siena Cathedral

Looking closely at Christ in Glory (1467) by the Italian manuscript painter Liberale da Verona, we can appreciate the power of Christian art in appealing to our senses. Our eyes are instantly drawn to the lavish application of burnished gold, sea-like blues, and magnetic reds which transform the image into a spectacle of optical devotion. Dressed in a cascading gown of lapis lazuli and surrounded by a choir of singing angels, Christ appears in the centre of the image. His right hand is raised with his fingers crossed – a subtle symbol which references his death on the Cross. A two-headed beast coils itself around the divine scene and is destroyed by the weight of Christ’s feet. Its presence denotes the perpetual defeat of Good over Evil, a theme which saturates the Gospels.

Liberale da Verona produced this golden miniature as a trial piece for the choir of Siena Cathedral, which later commissioned 16 painted hymn books from the artist based on this design. The Resurrected Christ returns to earth to fulfil the promise of his apocalyptic return made during this final meal. Sitting alongside his disciplines, he vowed that all who consumed the bread and wine of the Eucharist would enter into the Kingdom of Heaven and be reunited with him. The sumptuous feast of colours which permeates this luminous episode was intended to capture the gaze of its intended beholder. This was not simply for aesthetic purposes, but rather to implore them to sing words of solemn praise to Christ in heaven. The Son of God stands within a decorated letter ‘C’, marking the beginning of a new sentence to be sung by a member of the choir.

Engagement with this image moved beyond the realm of visual piety. Its sacred imagery instructed its medieval viewer to sing its songs of praise, while holding its delicate weight in their hands. Unlike the public paintings found above the altars of churches or hanging on chapel walls, it was intended to be held, touched, and viewed in close proximity. The combination of these senses: to touch, hear, and see, would have heightened its devotional context, and brought its viewer even closer to experiencing the supernatural. This image invites us all to imagine the all-consuming mystical atmosphere of heaven, in which we are guided by the songs of singing angels and lost in a sensory sea of liquid gold and oceanic blue.

Text by April Armstrong-Bascombe (Collections Intern, 2021).

The Arundel Society (1848-97)

The Arundel Society, or ‘Society for Promoting the Knowledge of Art’, contributed to the appreciation of Italian Renaissance art in Britain. Its publications, accessible by subscription, made use of the new medium of chromolithography to produce lavish colour prints. These initials and border ornament samples were copied from choir books in Siena for an alphabet book published by the Society in 1862. The copies, focusing on the ornament, share the same aesthetic as manuscript cuttings. The Roman painter and ceramic artist Ernesto Sprega (1829-1911) made this copy of an historiated initial from one of Liberale da Verona’s Siena Cathedral choir books at this time (Fig. 1).