The Bible 1 in the Biblioteca Capitolare Feliniana
in Lucca: Text, Images, Authorship
MS 1 in the Biblioteca Capitolare Feliniana of Lucca
(now exposed in the Cathedral Museum) is a Giant Bible
that includes the biblical books from Proverbs to Apocalypse,
accompanied by prologues, capitula lists and
decorated with two title-pages and more than one hundred
illuminated initials, modelled upon the late geometrical
style of the second half of the 12th century. Scholars
identified this Bible with the one commissioned, by the
rector Alamanno, to the scribe Iacopo in 1246 and to the
Lucchese painter Marco di Berlinghiero in 1250, for the
Cathedral Hospice of San Martino. This paper analyses
Bible 1 from several points of view, with the purpose of
fully understand the iconography of the illustrated initials.
Furthermore, the decorative programme is compared
to other works ascribed to Marco, his father Berlinghiero,
and his brother Bonaventura in order to state,
with more conviction, his authorship.