SANGUIGNI, Battista di Biagio

The choir books of Santa Maria degli Angeli are the crowning monuments of the art of illumination in early Renaissance Florence. They were highly praised by Vasari, who claims to have seen them many times. Twenty codices, most of them missing pages where illuminated initials were presumably cut out and sold to collectors, were transferred to the Biblioteca Laurenziana from Santa Maria degli Angeli upon the suppression of the monastery at the beginning of the nineteenth century.

The earliest of the series of choir books (Cod. Cor. 2, dated February 1370, and illuminated by Don Silvestro dei Gherarducci) is the only volume written before the sacking and burning of Santa Maria degli Angeli in 1378. In 1382 the monastery received a large bequest, provided for the completion of a full set of choir books for both Santa Maria degli Angeli and its neighbour Santa Maria Nuova. A complete set of antiphonaries, in twelve volumes, was apparently finished (that is, written, but not necessarily illuminated) for Santa Maria degli Angeli by 1397. Eleven of the volumes of the antiphonary (Cod. Cor. 9, 16, 14, 17, 13, 12, 1, 8, 19, 5, 6) contain both movable and fixed feast for a portion of the liturgical year. Two volumes Cod. Cor. 11 and 7), containing commons of the saints, were added in the 1390s and in 1406. The series of graduals was completed in 1406 and 1410 with the addition of four further volumes (including Cod. Cor. 18, 3 and 4).

In studying the rich variety of illuminations present in these volumes, as well as those cuttings in collections around the world that can confidently be traced to these codices, it is apparent that they were not completed strictly in the order in which the books were written, and in some cases there was a considerable delay between writing and painting a given volume. It is probable that the first three volumes to be completed with illuminations were Cod. Cor. 9, 19 and 6, all painted by Don Silvestro dei Gherarducci. The illuminations from Cod. Cor. 16 and 11 were commissioned to artists outside the monastery, while the remaining volumes of the antiphonary, Cod. Cor. 1, 5, 7, 8 and 13, may all be associated with the art of Lorenzo Monaco.

This cutting is from folio 31 of Cod. Cor. 3. It represents A Procession of Children in an initial Q.

Although Battista di Biagio Sanguigni is known primarily as a manuscript illuminator, recant research has identified him as the Master of 1419, the artist who painted an altarpiece in 1419 for the chapel of the prominent Giugni family for their parish church in the Mugello. This work and other devotional panels, such as the Ackland Madonna of Humility, reveal his probable origins in Lorenzo Monaco’s workshop.

In this image, a studious reiteration of a Madonna by Lorenzo Monaco’s shop, the Virgin appears to be sitting or kneeling on the ground, and thus it is referred to as the Madonna of Humility. A bulbous body, robe trimmed in elegant gold finery, and an over-the-top frame with two countering auger columns on each side of the main panel mark an especially evocative art object as well as religious icon portrait.

This panel was the left wing of an altarpiece the central panel of which, a Madonna and Child, is in the Cleveland Museum of Art. The altarpiece was commissioned in 1414 for the church of Santa Maria à Latera in the Mugello.