{"id":10850,"date":"2020-04-30T10:00:32","date_gmt":"2020-04-30T09:00:32","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.facsimilefinder.com\/articles\/?p=10850"},"modified":"2021-02-15T18:26:39","modified_gmt":"2021-02-15T17:26:39","slug":"the-most-delightful-model-book-of-all","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.facsimilefinder.com\/articles\/the-most-delightful-model-book-of-all\/","title":{"rendered":"The Most Delightful Model Book of All"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
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If you ever had the chance to roam the streets of Milan \u2014 or even just watch the news about Italy in the past few months \u2014 you must have caught a glimpse of the Duomo<\/em>, an imposing marble cathedral whose steeples seem to reach out for the clouds<\/strong>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

<\/span>How else could Medieval painters study leopards, lions, and gazelles in their natural environment<\/strong>?<\/span><\/div>\n\n\n\n

Imagine witnessing the start of the cathedral’s construction<\/strong>, roughly in the 1380s, when Duke Gian Galeazzo Visconti worked together with the best artists of his epoch<\/strong> at a project worthy of the continent’s latest artistic trends, to symbolically place his State among the great European powers of the time<\/strong>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Among the engineers who helped realize the Duke’s dream was Giovannino de’ Grassi<\/strong>, who produced the design for the first pillar capital and many other details, like bas-reliefs, pinnacles, and marble carvings <\/strong>on the church’s gigantic windows.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

A Nature Reserve on Parchment<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

Giovannino de’ Grassi<\/strong> was not just a gifted architect and sculptor, but also such a talented illuminator<\/strong> that Duke Gian Galeazzo Visconti entrusted him to decorate one of his most lavish codices, the Visconti Book of Hours<\/strong><\/a>. De’ Grassi also went down in European art history thanks to a model book <\/strong>that proved an invaluable tool for the painters of his generation.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Its 62 pages, filled with 77 nature drawings and 24 letters of the alphabet<\/strong> in superb quality, were often used individually by artists who desperately needed a model when representing animals they had never seen \u2014 and probably never would lay eye on \u2014 in their lifetime. This is why Giovannino de’ Grassi portrayed animals’ species-specific behaviors<\/a><\/strong>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n