St. Francis of Assisi presenting a Venetian senator to the Virgin and Child, in a frame with leone andante, the Contarini family arms and a cherub head.

Presented in an ornamental frame on a faux exposed-brick wall, this miniature shows the book's owner, Francesco Contarini, and his patron saint, adoring the enthroned Virgin and Child. The diagonal composition of the figures exchanging gazes, which creates a psychological connection between them, was borrowed from sixteenth-century Venetian altarpieces. The mountainous landscape beyond evokes the Italian mainland governed by Venice. This commissione records Contarini's solemn oath (giuramento) and the statutes (capitolare) of his post as Procurator of the three districts north of the Grand Canal in Venice. He wears the dress of the Venetian nobility, a robe of crimson velvet with fur-trim and wide sleeves. Draped over his left arm is the golden stole of the knighthood of the "Stola d'Oro", which was granted at the end of one of his numerous ambassadorial missions. Contarini became doge in 1623 but died the following year.

Source: Anne-Marie Eze, Illuminating the Serenissima: Books of the Republic of Venice, special exhibition on view in the museum's Long Gallery, May 3 through June 19, 2011.

Illuminating the Serenissima: Books of the Republic of Venice

Purchased by Isabella Stewart Gardner in 1903 from Charles Eliot Norton (1827-1908), American author, social critic, and professor of art history at Harvard College.

Select bibliography

Morris Carter. A choice of Manuscripts and Bookbindings from the Library of Isabella Stewart Gardner Fenway Court. Boston, 1922, pp. 40-41.

Seymour de Ricci with the assistance of W. J. Wilson. Census of Medieval and Renaissance Manuscripts in the United States and Canada. 3 vols. New York, 1935-40, I, p. 933.

Helena Szépe. "Isabella Stewart Gardner's Venetian manuscripts" in Gondola Days: Isabella Stewart Gardner and the Palazzo Barbaro Circle. Boston, 2004, p. 235, fig. 174.