(b Naples; fl c. 1480–94). Italian illuminator. Two manuscripts by this artist can be identified from surviving payment records in the Aragonese treasury: on 13 October 1480 he was paid for the illustration of ‘Agostino super Salamis’, a work that has now been identified as St Augustine’s Commentary on the Psalms (London, BL, MSS Add. 14779–83), while a copy of Aesop’s Fables (U. Valencia, Bib., MS. 758) has been linked to a payment made in 1481. Analysis of these documented volumes allows the partial reconstruction of the artist’s career. Other work for the King of Naples, Ferdinand of Aragon, is recorded in numerous sources, but the manuscripts described in these commissions remain untraced. Majorana’s hand has nevertheless been identified in a Breviary that once belonged to Ferdinand (c. 1480; Naples, Bib. N., MS. 1. B. 57). This was probably executed while Majorana was in the workshop of the Neapolitan illuminator Cola Rapicano, where he appears to have begun his career, as some pages reveal the hand of Nardo Rapicano, another member of the shop. Majorana also decorated several volumes for the libraries of both Cardinal Giovanni d’Aragona (1456–85) and Andrea Matteo Aquaviva d’Aragona, Duca d’ Atri. His works for the latter include copies of Virgil’s Aeneid, Eclogues and Georgics, now bound as one volume (1482–94; Leiden, Bib. Rijksuniv., MS. BPL 6B), and a copy of Ptolemy’s Cosmographia (Paris, Bib. N., MS. lat. 10764). The Leiden copy of Virgil is an example of the numerous volumes Majorana decorated with frontispieces featuring classicizing architecture in a style that may have had its source in the manuscripts of the Venetian-Roman type that were circulated at the Aragonese court in Naples. It is also possible to detect in them influences from northern European, Florentine and Ferrarese manuscript illumination.

• Majorana, Cristoforo
  • Acquaviva d’Aragona, Andrea Matteo III