Medallion from the Border of a Latin Bible: The Expulsion of Adam and Eve from Paradise
Primo Miniatore di San Domenico (Italian)
early 1300s
- Medium
- tempera on vellum
- Classification
- Manuscript
- Dimensions
- Diameter: 7 cm (2 3/4 in.)
- Culture
- Italy, early 14th century
- Museum
- Cleveland Museum of Art, Medieval Art
- Credit line
- The Jeanne Miles Blackburn Collection
- Rights
- Public domain (CC0), as the museum states it.
- Who can see it
- Adult profiles and older: its museum's description or title mentions nudity. How works are placed
View at the Cleveland Museum of Art
About this work
As revealed by their subjects and blank versos (reverse sides), these medallions were undoubtedly excised from a Genesis page in a large lectern Bible. Typically, such medallions would have appeared in conjunction with a large-scale historiated initial I running the full length of the text and introducing the book of Genesis: In principio creativit Deus caelum et terram (In the beginning God created heaven and earth). Such schemes of page layout and decoration were common features of Bibles produced in Bolognese workshops and destined for wealthy religious institutions of the Emilian region, for which Bologna was the artistic and intellectual center.
