[The gathering of Manna and a Dominican friar reading mass].

Miniature painting on vellum, 12.2 cm diameter. Watercolour and gold leaf, pen with black and red ink on verso. Pasted to backing cardboard. Circular miniature initial separated into two parts by a curved S-shape in gilt. The upper section represents three Jewish figures gathering manna falling from the heavens during the Exodus. To the right a horned Moses is seen. The lower section shows a Dominican friar celebrating mass before a monstrance and an altar. The manna scene serves as a prefiguration of the Holy Host in the monstrance below. - The fragment probably belonged to a Dominican antiphonary, and the verso side contains musical staffs and text fragments. The stylistic elements in the illumination point to a workshop in Southern Germany, probably in Swabia. Comparable in style is a copy, dated to ca. 1455, of Johannes Hartlieb's "Buch aller verbotenen Kunst" (Dresden, Landesbibl., Mscr. M 59). The visual idea of conjoining the scenes is also apparent in the "Biblia Deutsch" published by Johann Sensenschmidt in Nuremberg between 1476 and 1478.