Alcune considerazioni intorno all’iconografia dei santi vescovi ambrosiani nel Martirologio trecentesco Berlino-Milano

The Ambrosian Berlin-Milan Psalter, Hymnarium and Martyrologium (Berlin, Kupferstichkabinett – Staatliche Museen, 78 C 16 and Milano, Biblioteca Ambrosiana, P 165 sup., ff. 1r-21v) is a quite unknown and abundantly illuminated 14th-century Milan manuscript. It encloses 15 illuminations in the Psalter and in the Hymnarium, along with 123 historiated pages in the Martyrologium. The miniatures are to be considered the work of the illuminator named the Pantheon Master and of his workshop. Among the numerous saints recorded, the Martyrologium displays also 19 former bishops of Milan and for eight of them – Dionigi, Materno, Calimero, Simpliciano, Mona, Magno, Castriziano e Ambrogio – there is also a brief hagiographic text and a miniature. These types of depictions are quite rare, and seemingly not previously documented. The non-common iconographies, indeed, are related mainly to the Martyrologium text and, sometimes, also to other hagiographical texts. The paper describes also the complex iconography of St. Martin, which was not bishop of Milan but had a huge worship in its diocese. From a stylistic point of view, the Berlin-Milan miniatures are close to the illuminations of other two manuscripts: a Godfrey of Viterbo’s Pantheon (Paris, Bibliothèque nationale de France, lat. 4895), made for Azzone Visconti, and a St. Augustine’s De civitate Dei (Paris, Bibliothèque nationale de France, lat. 2066) realized for Bruzio Visconti. The latter can be dated before 1336, thanks to the absence of a heraldic detail in Bruzio’s coat of arms, which, instead, is present in other two Bruzio’s manuscripts (Paris, Bibliothèque nationale de France, lat. 6467, and Città del Vaticano, Biblioteca Apostolica Vaticana, Vat. lat. 2194) decorated by the Master of 1346. As a consequence, the three manuscripts decorated by the Pantheon Master are likely to be dated between 1331 (the year recorded in the Pantheon code) and 1336.