Initial V: Saint Placidus, cutting from an antiphonal
A cutting from a choir antiphonal, a large liturgical songbook for church singing, painted around 1385 by Don Silvestro dei Gherarducci, a Florentine illuminator, and held by the J. Paul Getty Museum. The picture is a historiated initial with a monk holding a lily and palm inside a gold-ground letter V, framed by blue, orange and green acanthus-like scrolls. A designer might take the flat gold ground, the interlocking leaf-and-flame borders, and the decorative use of a single capital letter as a frame for a figure.
