The Marriage; the Kiss of the Bride (initial P); the Bride Abandoned (initial D)

Nicolo da Bologna

National Gallery of Art

This is a page from a book, with two tall columns of black text following a rectangular scene at the upper left corner, which shows a crowd under a balcony. Painted on vellum, the page also has a deocrated capital P and D, and a few other markings in cobalt blue and scarlet red. All the people in the scenes have pale skin. Most of the women wear crowns over long, braided hair. Their long dresses and the men's tunics and robes are painted in shades of azure or sky blue, crimson red, or pine green. In the rectangular illustration at the top left, a crowd of more than a dozen people gather closely around a man wearing a scarlet-red tunic, hood, and stockings, putting a gold ring on the hand of a woman wearing a shell-pink dress and a translucent veil under her crown. Two men to our right blow long horns, a man in front of them bends over to strike a pair of drums, and a woman to our left plays an instrument like a violin. Five people peek over the edge of a balcony above the crowd in front of a shining gold background. Below this scene, the man and woman are shown from the waist up within the round form of the captial letter P. They kiss and embrace against a vibrant blue background. In the D below, which resembles an O with an elongated apostrophe at the top, a woman with brown hair, wearing a garment that is half red and half green, holds a hand to her chest, her lips parted. The other hand rests on the bottom of the opening within the D. The tightly spaced text, next to the P and D, extends down to the bottom of the column and the right column is entirely text. About halfway down the right column, a smaller capital P is picked out with blue against a red field, and marks in blue and red are interspersed in the text in that column. There is a wide margin surrounding the text around all four sides of the sheet. The Roman numeral four, written as "IIII" alternating between red and blue strokes, appears at the top center.