Evangelist Matthew Miniature: A Remarkable 15th-Century Russian Gospel

An elderly Matthew sits at his writing desk beneath a red canopy, enclosed by tall, closely packed buildings. This Evangelist Matthew miniature, painted on folio 3 verso of a Gospel manuscript dated to the early fifteenth century, is the only completed evangelist portrait recorded in the volume. The manuscript is now held by the State Historical Museum in Moscow.

Evangelist Matthew miniature in a 15th-century Gospel, showing the seated writer beneath a red canopy amid tall buildings.
Evangelist Matthew, folio 3 verso of an early 15th-century Gospel manuscript held by the State Historical Museum, Moscow.

The Evangelist Matthew miniature

Matthew turns towards the desk, his head inclined and his hands brought close to the page. Broad folds gather around his seated figure. The buildings press into the narrow space behind him: a tall opening rises above his shoulder, while the red canopy stretches across the upper part of the composition. The desk and architecture give the evangelist a place in which to work, though their compressed arrangement follows the needs of the page more closely than those of a room.

Losses in the painted surface are especially apparent across Matthew’s face, clothing and the canopy. They make the finer details difficult to judge, but leave the composition legible. Its surviving colour sets the dark figure against warm ochre walls and a reddish desk.

An unfinished scheme of Gospel decoration

The portrait stands at the beginning of a manuscript written in semi-uncial script on parchment. A coloured headpiece on a gold ground follows on folio 4. Later divisions of the book were prepared for comparable decoration: spaces for miniatures were left on folios 81 verso, 132 verso and 215 verso, with spaces for headpieces on the following folios. Those planned miniatures were never completed.

Matthew’s portrait preserves part of an intended sequence of evangelist images; the empty spaces show how much of that sequence remained unrealised. The original headings and capital letters were written in red. Red initials on folios 4 and 133, by contrast, belong to the eighteenth century, as do the seven paper leaves added at the end.

Binding and later history

The parchment leaves, now heavily trimmed, measure approximately 21 × 15 cm. The book has a sixteenth-century binding of boards covered in yellow brocade, with blue fabric visible beneath. Copper fittings on its upper cover bear images of the evangelists and the Crucifixion with attendant figures. Only one clasp survives.

The manuscript’s history before its arrival in the Chudov Monastery collection in 1855 is unknown. A nineteenth-century note inside the binding appears to associate it with that collection, while repeated inscriptions dated 1858 state that it belonged to the Moscow cathedral monastery. The collection passed to the Synodal Library in 1899 and to the State Historical Museum in 1920. A museum account confirms that route for the Chudov manuscripts as a group; it does not establish where this particular Gospel was made.

(The translation was edited by E. Alexandraki.)

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