This is one of a series of fragments from choirbooks of a type known as Graduals that were made for the San Michele a Murano monastery in Venice. The majority of these fragments were illuminated by a monk of the Camaldolese Order in Santa Maria degli Angeli in Florence, Don Silvestro dei Gherarducci. At this time, Venice was not a centre of illumination. In 1401, the Dominican nuns wanting advice on the making of books were told by Goivanni Dominici, a Dominican from Florence, to study the choirbooks of Santa Maria degli Angeli, which contained Silvestro’s work. The monastery was the home of a number of scribes, painters and illuminators in the 14th and 15th centuries. They worked both for their own house and for other churches and even secular customers.

Silvestro may have worked as part of a team with some ornamentation done by others. This particular fragment is believed to be the work of an assistant, the Master of the Canzoni. The fragment shows an initial A for the Mass for Easter Tuesday, with a bearded prophet holding a scroll. The drawing seems slightly clumsy, but the illuminator is clearly working in the same style as Don Silvestro dei Gherarducci.

Nineteenth-century enthusiasts altered medieval artefacts to suit their taste. Medieval illuminated manuscripts could be cut up to make them more marketable and pleasing to the collector. Choirbooks from San Michele a Murano in Venice were dismembered for their images. Single leaves survive, but also initials, as here, cut to shape. It is not known when the choirbooks were cut up. The Museum seems to have acquired this piece in the late 1850s.