Historiated Initial
A historiated initial cut from a manuscript page, made around 1450 by Francesco di Antonio del Chierico, a Florentine illuminator working for patrons of devotional and humanist books, now held by the J. Paul Getty Museum. The picture shows two small scenes set inside an ornate initial, with gold leaf, blue ground and flowing acanthus-like scrollwork in pink, green and gold. A designer could take the interlocking framing of gold, pink and blue scrollwork as a model for decorative borders, and the miniature landscapes as compact scene-within-frame compositions.
