2-733-760 - Heritage Art/Heritage Images

Leaf from the Wettinger Gradual: Historiated Initial (I) with Scenes from the Life of St. Augustine, c. 1330. This imposing leaf comes from the monumental Wettinger Gradual preserved in the Canton Library in Aarau, Switzerland. The focus of the decoration consists of a single massive initial I. It is constructed with four separate compartments featuring scenes from the life of Saint Augustine. The compartments read (from bottom to top): Augustine teaching before his conversion; the dream of Augustine’s mother; Augustine’s baptism; and Augustine teaching monks. The monk in the lower margin holds a scroll that reads in Latin: "Pray for us, blessed Father Augustine." The initial would have introduced the feast of Saint Augustine (August 28) in the Sanctorale: In medio Ecclesiae aperuit os eius ("And in the midst of the church she shall open his mouth"). Given the prominence of this initial within the gradual, and the depiction of an Augustinian canon in the lower marginal extender, the manuscript was likely produced for a community of Augustinians.