Jesus Casts out the Demons

Author: Albert Elen

This sheet is a small part of a folio from a partly illuminated manuscript held in the Biblioteca Riccardiana in Florence (Ms. 1354).^[1] It must have been removed more than three hundred years ago, given the presence of the collector’s mark of the English collector Jonathan Richardson (1665-1745). The large tear at the bottom of the sheet could indicate that this was done quickly and carelessly. Whether it happened before or after the manuscript entered the library is not known.^[2] The manuscript is in poor condition and is not complete. It contains an incomplete description of the life of Christ (fols. 1-30) and is an early example of the use of paper rather than traditional vellum or parchment. The Italian text is set in two columns, and one to three scenes are drawn here and there in the columns, an early form of book illustration. However not all these drawings have been executed: the places reserved for them have often been left empty. Only twelve illustrations have survived and these are all, save one, grouped at the beginning of the manuscript (fols. 1-20).^[3]

The Rotterdam sheet covers slightly more than the bottom half of the left-hand column of an original folio, in other words the part on the bound side. This can be made out from the fragment (right-hand half) of a watermark at the upper right that could be seen complete in the middle of the full folio. In many of the surviving ninety-four sheets – most of them filled in along the edges and then bound into an album – the watermark is present in its entirety. It is of the post-horn type, which can also be found in a similar shape and size in dated documents from Florence (1364, 1370), Siena (1365) and Pisa (1366).^[4] This type of watermark is the only one to appear in about half of the folios, and this makes it possible to reconstruct the original quire arrangement of the manuscript.^[5] The paper is of the same origin and probably comes from quires of five bi-folios each from a ream (packet) of paper supplied by a local paper mill.

The drawing on the front shows Jesus driving devils out from one of the possessed men lying on the ground. The devils entered into a herd of swine, regarded as unclean animals. According to the evangelists (Luke 8:26-39; Matthew 8:28-34, Mark 5:1-20) the possessed herd ran violently down a steep hill into the lake and drowned. The start of this can be seen in the background: two pigs stand at the edge of the lake and one is already in the water. The drawing on the verso shows Jesus with some of his disciples. They sit at a table placed parallel to the picture plane, leaving the figures’ lower legs visible. Judas sits on Christ’s left, John on his right. The two drawings correspond to the content of the handwritten text.

According to Degenhart/Schmitt (1968), who identified the Rotterdam sheet as originally part of the manuscript, the drawings were executed with a degree of carelessness. While it is true that the drawings differ from one another in quality, the authors believe that they are by the same hand. On the basis of similarities to drawings dating from around 1390 from the circle of Agnolo Gaddi (c.1350-1396) and Lorenzo di Bicci (1350-1427), they place the drawings in Florence.^[6]

The image shows the drawing fitted on its eighteenth-century mount, made for either the collector Jonathan Richardson Senior (1665-1714) or John Barnard 1685-1764). The drawing is enclosed within an inner framing line and bears the collectors’ marks of Benjamin West (1783-1820, L.419 at lower left), August Grahl (1791-1868, L.1199 at lower right) and Richardson (L.2183 at lower far right. Barnard’s mark, consisting of his initials (L.1420) is in the lower right corner of the mount.