One of the favored artists of the Gonzaga court, Pietro Guindaleri or “Guindalleriis” of Cremona entered the service first of Federico I Gonzaga (1441–1484), the Marquis of Mantua, in 1464, as stated in a letter of that year. He continued to work for the Gonzaga court and perhaps also for the Duke of Urbino, Federico da Montefeltro, until his death in 1506. In the absence of early works by him from Cremona, it has not been possible to clarify his formation, but his production during the Gonzaga years witnesses the profound

influence of the innovative frescos of his contemporary, Andrea Mantegna (1431–1506), in the Ovetari Chapel in the Church of the Eremitani in Padua and the Camera degli Sposi in the Ducal Palace in Mantua. In 1469, he is documented as supplying designs for brocades for Federico, and then between 1479 and 1484, documents testify to his having illuminated a large Uffiziolo for Sigismondo Gonzaga. From 1489 to 1506, he was responsible for completing a Historia naturalis by Pliny, written by Matteo Contugi da Volterra between

18 November 1463 and 9 October 1468. The Pliny was still in his hands and incomplete at the time of his death; it has been securely identified as the manuscript severely damaged in a fire in 1904 in Turin (Biblioteca Nazionale Universitaria, Ms. I. I. 22-23). Written by the same scribe responsible for the Pliny, the Comedies of Tito Maccius Plautus in Madrid (Bibliotheca National MS Vit. 22-5) is also a documented work by him. Other works attributed to him, all or in part, Petrarch’s Canzoniere in London (British Library, MS Harley 3567), the Gospel Book of Federico da Montefeltro (Vatican City, BAV, Urb. Lat. 10), and the Book of Hours of Isabella d’Este of Gonzaga (Cambridge, Harvard University, Houghton Library, MS Typ. 213; Chantilly, Musée Condé, Divers MS VI, MSS 356 and 357 and London, Sotheby’s, 7 July 2015, lot 27). Apart from the Pliny, there is no universal agreement on the attributions, for Guindaleri seems to have had a workshop through which he collaborated with others on the same manuscripts, including Gugliemo Giraldi, the Master of the Pliny of Ravenna (Giovanni Corenti), and the Master of the “occhi spalancati.”



Previously unknown and unpublished, this spectacular leaf comes from the Hours of Isabella d’Este of Gonzaga (1474–1539) written by one of the most celebrated of Renaissance scribes, Bartolomeo Sanvito (1433– 1511) (Cambridge, Harvard University, Houghton Library, MS Typ. 213). Conceived on a grand scale, far larger than any of the eleven other Books of Hours associated with Sanvito, this manuscript, which has been wellstudied by Laura Nuvoloni, Albinia de la Mare, and others, was executed in two stages. Composed for a still-unidentified patron, the first part contains only the Office of the Virgin, written in a hand that is firm and upright, like the style of Sanvito’s beautiful littera antiqua script in the 1480s. Whereas the second part, containing the Calendar, the Seven Penitential Psalms, and the Offices of the Cross and Holy Spirit is written later and in a looser hand for the

marriage of Isabella d’Este to Francesco II Gonzaga in 1490, but before about 1494, during a visit by Sanvito to Mantua. The manuscript was an exceptionally deluxe production, including stained purple and green leaves, miniatures preceding each of the hours, and historiated initials for each hour. The evidence for Isabella as intended owner exists in two prayers at the end of the volume giving the supplicant’s name as “famulam tuam Ysabellam” (thy servant Isabella).



A complete description is available upon request.