The Cleveland Museum of Art

Collection Online as of December 13, 2025

Tempera, paint made from egg yolk, circular painting with figures outlined in brown of a nude man looking and reaching out towards a person wrapped in white with a gold halo floating in on a cloud against a solid blue sky. Below, a central green tree leans right in a pale brown landscape. A white bird, blue, orange, and brown four-legged animals, and small, curled up creature with pointy ears all face the nude man.

Medallion from the Border of a Latin Bible: The Sixth Day of Creation

early 1300s

Primo Miniatore di San Domenico

(Italian)
Italy, Bologna
tempera on vellum
Sheet: 7 cm (2 3/4 in.)
The Jeanne Miles Blackburn Collection 2006.9
Location: Not on view

Description

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.
  • Mortimer Brandt; [Bruce Ferrini, Akron]
  • Fliegel, Stephen N. The Jeanne Miles Blackburn Collection of Manuscript Illuminations. Cleveland, Ohio: Cleveland Museum of Art, 1999. Mentioned and Reproduced: p. 18, cat. no. 10 archive.org
    Appleby, Zoe, and Tess Artis. "Creation." In Creation and (Re)birth, edited by Gerhard Lutz, and Elina Gertsman, 5-7. Cleveland: Cleveland Museum of Art, 2024. Mentioned and reproduced: p. 5, fig. 3
  • Creation, Birth, and Rebirth. The Cleveland Museum of Art, Cleveland, OH (organizer) (August 17, 2024-July 16, 2025).
    Medieval Bologna: Art for a University City. Frist Art Museum, Nashville, TN (organizer) (November 5, 2021-January 30, 2022) https://fristartmuseum.org/exhibition/medieval-bologna-art-for-a-university-city/.
    The Jeanne Miles Blackburn Collection of Manuscript Illuminations. The Cleveland Museum of Art, Cleveland, OH (organizer) (December 19, 1999-February 27, 2000).
  • {{cite web|title=Medallion from the Border of a Latin Bible: The Sixth Day of Creation|url=false|author=Primo Miniatore di San Domenico|year=early 1300s|access-date=13 December 2025|publisher=Cleveland Museum of Art}}

Source URL:

https://www.clevelandart.org/art/2006.9