Initial D: The Calling of Saints Peter and Andrew, cutting from a gradual

From the Getty Museum record

This jewel-toned initial *D* overgrown with foliate all’antica (“in the manner of the ancients”) motifs was once likely the frontispiece of a choir book, opening with the Christian Feast of Saint Andrew (November 30). The scene represents the calling of Saints Peter and Andrew, described in the Gospel of Mark, and shows the two apostles as fifteenth-century fishermen set in a landscape reminiscent of Lombardy. In contrast, Jesus’s majestic figure, addressing the two men from the lakeshore, is attired in biblical garb. The Milanese artist, Giovanni Antonio Decio, wrote his name in a decorative jamb to the left of the initial *D*, immortalizing his fame and the date of his artistic creation: “1480 / IO(hannus) AN(tonius) DE DEXI(o) F(ecit)” (“1480 / Giovanni Anotnio Decio made [this]”).