A single leaf, on vellum, from a manuscript chansonnier, bound into the front of a Scotto print. One side has the soprano part to a chanson beginning "Au pres de vous secrettement demeure" and without attribution.

An accompanying note from Francois Lesure (1959) estimates a date of ca. 1525 for the illustration, and identifies it as a missing leaf from Codex Ashburnham 1085 in Florence. He indicates that each of the four partbooks had originally included such a painted miniature, but that only one, the Paris exemplar, still had its miniature in place.

Presumably copied by 'scribe I' of the Florence book.

The book formed part of the collection of Douglas Bluntly Gordon, of Baltimore, Maryland, who bequeathed it to the University of Virginia Library in December 1986. He acquired it c.1959 from Arthur Ran, the Parisian bookseller; it had earlier featured in the sale of the collection of Ernest Bancel in 1882; it appears that it was Bancel who acquired the manuscript leaf and had it bound into the volume with the print.

trimmed at the edges to reduce it to the size of the printed partbook

black void mensural

c. 1528

Ornamental initial on field of gold, incorporating a coat of arms, identified by a handwritten note on the facing page of the bound volume as that of Guelders (or Gelderland) and Julich, perhaps indicating that Charles, Duke of Guelders, commissioned the volume of which it once formed the first piece. The other side of the leaf (recto?) is a beautifully executed full-page illustration of a musician playing a shawm while standing outside a walled town, apparentlty depicting Amphion at Thebes.

vellum