Mystery, God And The Wonders of Death: Cristoforo de Predis’ Illuminated Visions

“He commanded and they were created.”

– Psalm 33

 

 

Cristoforo de Predis (1440-1486) painted his visions of the final judgement in the late 15th Century. We see fish above the sea, the sun and moon dying, stars falling from the sky, blood dripping from trees and winged demons dropping naked, fragile mortals into vats of freezing water.

Predis was doing God’s work around the same time that Hieronymus Bosch’s (c. 1450 – 9 August 1516) surreal, startling and hugely influential art was warning against lust and sin. Likewise, Predis used his paintings to sermonise God’s might, showing us the final judgement in vivid detail. And get a load of the colours – his work is too bright, too lurid for any Christian to ignore.

 

Predis was an Italian miniaturist and illuminator working in what thanks to the Lives of the Artists (1550), a book by Florentine writer Giorgio Vasari (30 July 1511 – 27 June 1574), we know as the Renaissance. Born deaf and mute in Prato to artistic parents Leonardo de Predis and Margaret Giussani, Cristoforo’s no less talented siblings (his brothers Ambrogio, Evangelista, Bernardino and Cristoforo were also painters) knew his strengths and in 1471 helped him secure work as an illuminator for the Court of the Sforza, arguing that though unable to speak and hear, their brother was highly intelligent and a skilled painter.

 

The de Predis family hosted Leonardo da Vinci when he visited Milan for the commission Virgin of the Rocks, and Leonardo met Cristoforo on that occasion. Leonardo later wrote about what can be learned from deaf people and their expressiveness in his treatise on painting Codex Urbinas:

“Do not reproach me for proposing to you a teacher who does not speak, because he will teach you better with facts than all other teachers through words. The good painter has two principal things to paint, namely the man and the concept of his mind. The first is easy, the second difficult, because one has to depict with gestures and movements of the limbs, and this must be learned from the mute, who do it better than any other kind of men.”

 

 

Cristoforo de Predis: Le Sphaerae Coelestis et Planetarum (The Spheres of the Heavens and the Planets)

 

There are just four known works by de Predis, based on his signature. Records indicate that he was commissioned by the Borromeo family to produce the Borromeo Book of Hours, Stories of St. Joachim, St. Anne, the Virgin Mary, Jesus, the Baptist, and the End of the World (1476), The Missal of the Madonna del Monte in Varese (1476) and Fragments of a choir.

And then there’s one work that historians believe he created: Le Sphaerae Coelestis et Planetarum (The Spheres of the Heavens and the Planets) (below), also referred to as De Sphaera, an elaborate illuminated manuscript richly decorated with 12 different colours and gold leaf. The first couple of pages display astrological charts containing constellations and diagrams demonstrating how to use astrolabes.

 

 

The pages are elaborately embellished with pictures of the zodiacs and human representations of the Sun, Moon, and the first six planets in the solar system, excluding earth. Each of these representations appears on the left page, with the right page displaying an image of daily life corresponding to the astrological significance of the planet. The representations of life include detailed depictions of all aspects of society, including images of peasants, beggars, merchants, criminals, disabled people, and the elites.

Under each painting, Predis includes a commentary that describes the painting’s connection to the work of Johannes de Sacrobosco, the author of an influential astronomy textbook. De Sphaera serves as a commentary for the 13th-century De Sphaera Mundi astronomy text written by Sacrobosco.

The planets appear in the order of: Saturn – Jupiter – Mars – Sun – Venus – Mercury – Moon

 

 

Via: Wallace Collection, Mapping the World, LoC