Leaf from a Romanesque Lectionary, with a 'Beneventan-style' initial, in Latin, decorated manuscript on parchment [Italy (probably Montecassino or Naples), twelfth century]

Single leaf, with 22 lines of two sizes of a square and angular bookhand, without biting curves, bright red rubrics, tall capitals touched in pale yellow wash, three coloured initials in interlocking and parallel acanthus leaf fronds in dark blue, pale green and bright red, two of these held together by white penwork bands and with simple coloured leaves at their terminals, recovered from a binding (with sixteenth-century penwork title on spine) and hence trimmed at edges with losses to margins, scuffs, small holes, folds and small sections of paper adhering, overall fair and presentable condition, 265 by 155mm.

The initials here with their tri-coloured lappets and forms related to white-vine initials, but quite distinct from them, are striking in that their closest comparables are in manuscripts written in Beneventan minuscule in Montecassino or Naples (see F. Avril and Y. Załuska, Manuscrits enlumines d'origine italienne, I, 1980, nos. 30 and 31 for eleventh-century examples, with later c. 1100 and twelfth-century examples in nos. 32 and 34). Manuscripts were written in mainstream Romanesque hands in such Beneventan centres (see that sold in our rooms, 8 July 2015, lot 13), and this is probably another example of palaeographic and decorative cross-over with a scribe from Montecassino or Naples experimenting in Romanesque Carolingian minuscule.