MATTEO DI SER CAMBIO - b. ~1357 ?, d. ~1427 Perugia - WGA

MATTEO DI SER CAMBIO

(b. ~1357 ?, d. ~1427 Perugia)

Italian goldsmith and miniaturist. He was registered with the Guild of Goldsmiths in Perugia in about 1350. From about 1370, date of his first signed work, his workshop was the most active and the most sought-after in Perugia during that period. Although all his work as a goldsmith has been lost, many of his works of miniature, however, remain, especially his elaborate illuminations of the Perugia Statutes and Lists of the Guilds. The most well known amongst the works that made him famous are his illuminations in the Statute and List of the Guilds of 1377 for two of the most important town guilds, the Moneychangers and the Merchants.

In these works, his marked realism and narrative inclination enabled him to renew the iconography of the emblems of the town gates by replacing the simple scene of the protective saint with a more complex scene, that recalls the story of the saint, set in a background of views and landscapes that effectively portray fourteenth century life. His workshop also illuminated other Lists of Guilds in Perugia.

Gregory IX: Decretals

This manuscript in Ravenna is composite. The original was made in the 1340s and contains the text of the Decretals of Gregory IX. (Decretals are letters of the pope that formulate decisions in ecclesiastical law of the Catholic Church. Pope Gregory IX ordered in 1230 his chaplain and confessor, St. Raymond of Pennafort, a Dominican, to form a new canonical collection destined to replace all former collections.) The first two leaves were added later, in the 1370s. They contain tables of consanguinity and comments on the Fourth Book of the Decretals.

The original manuscript is ornamented with decorated initials and scenes with figures. The decoration was made in Perugia in the 1340s. The miniatures on the first two leaves were executed by Matteo di Ser Cambio, an artist who worked in Perugia in whom Sienese and Paduan influences are merged.

Folio 4 is decorated with a miniature showing the table of consanguinity. At the centre of a green, three-dimensional grid, a large ancestral figure is depicted with a tree-shaped schema before him, which outlines the grades of relationship in which marriage was forbidden without ecclesiastical dispensation.

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Statute and Register of the Moneychangers' Guild

The picture shows the frontispiece of the Statute and Register of the Moneychangers’ Guild. Beneath the picture with a depiction of the Perugino griffin on a money chest, the miniaturist’s self-portrait can be seen.

In addition to the overall quality of the writing and illumination, the importance of this codex lies in the triplet that can be read at the bottom of paper 3r, just below the portrait of the artist, which says I, Matteo di ser Cambio goldsmith, whom I have portrayed here with the compass in my hand, did write, paint and illuminate this book.

Matteo di ser Cambio, in this register as in the other, very similar one for the Merchants’ Guild, completely renews the iconography of the emblems of the town quarters by replacing the static image of the patron saint with a real-life scene, portrayed as realistically as possible.

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