The decorated halos
Artists' Techniques
The way that halos were decorated throughout the manuscript is remarkably uniform, considering the number of artists at work. The vast majority of them consists of plain gold leaf, usually integrated into the miniature’s background, profiled in vermilion red, with small white dots equally spaced along the entire outline. In a few cases (fols. 23v, 49v, 50r, 73r, 74v), groups of two or three white lines run across the width of the halos.
Hand A was the only artist to occasionally decorate his gilded halos with tooling and incised lines forming various patterns, rather than with painted outlines.
Christ enthroned with the Virgin and St John the Baptist
Christ is shown as Judge, with the Evangelists’ symbols in the corner medallions of the frame. The Virgin and St John the Baptist intercede with him for the salvation of humankind. This Byzantine scene, known as the Deësis, would have reached the Veneto from Constantinople. The Gaibana Master incorporated it into the Beatus initial for Psalm 1 (fol. 23v). The artist responsible for this miniature, Hand G, adopted it for his composition on fol. 115v.