Virgin and Child, St. Francis of Assisi, leone andante, St. Vincent Ferrer, Latin inscription reading 'I Francesco Donato, by the grace of God, Doge of Venice, etc', putti raising the Gritti family arms, antique armor and trophies.

This illumination refers to the institutions that governed Venetian life, in order of importance from top to bottom: piety, the state, the doge, and nobility. The Serenissima's power is conveyed by the military motifs in the border. The male saints are the patrons and namesakes of the doge and Vincenzo Gritti, who received this book for his election as Lieutenant of Udine, a city in north-east Italy. The miniature is by the most skilled and fashionable illuminator of commissioni in sixteenth-century Venice. He takes his name from another illumination with equally graceful figures and luminous bold colors, which is signed 'T.° Ve. painted this 1528'. The signature, however, was added later as a ploy to attribute the splendid work to the most celebrated painter of the period, Tiziano Vecellio, called Titian (about 1488-1576).

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.

See the related artworks for a masterpiece by Titian and another illumination by Master T.° Ve. in the collection.

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.

Select bibliography

Morris Carter. A choice of Manuscripts and Bookbindings from the Library of Isabella Stewart Gardner Fenway Court. Boston, 1922, pp. 33-36, 98.

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.