ABSTRACT
This chapter publishes three cuttings of illuminated initials from Italian manuscript choir books, which are now in American collections. It argues that they are attributable to the illuminator Giovan Pietro da Birago of Milan, and shows that they come from a set of corali made for the Cathedral of Santa Maria of Brescia. The attribution to Birago depends on the fact that his name is written on scrolls in three initials in corali which are part of a set of eighteen surviving volumes made for the Cathedral in Brescia. The first detailed discussion of the attribution of the initials in the corali was by Emma Calabi in 1938. The second category, images of saints, the scene of the martyrdom of Sts Faustinus and Jovita. The Corpus Christi procession, also an example of third category, though in the Voelkle initial the illusionistic way the wafer is painted in the transparent container of the monstrance is particularly remarkable.
