Santa Maria degli Angeli in Florence, a monastery of the Camaldolese order, was the home of a number of scribes, painters and illuminators in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries. They worked both for their own house and for other churches and even secular customers. Silvestro dei Gherarducci (1339-99) was active as a painter and illuminator in the abbey from the 1370s, though he also acted as sub-prior and prior. He illuminated works not only for Santa Maria degli Angeli but also for a Camaldolese house in Venice, San Michele a Murano. At this time, Venice was not a centre of illumination. In 1401, Dominican nuns wanting advice on the making of books were told by Giovanni Dominici, a Dominican from Florence, to study the choirbooks of Santa Maria degli Angeli, which contained Silvestro’s work. Silvestro may have worked as part of a team with some ornamentation done by others. Illuminators such as Belbello of Pavia and Cristoforo Cortese were later employed on the choirbooks and it is through their careers in Venice that compositions and styles developed by Silvestro dei Gherarducci became used in that city.

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.