Maestro Daddesco

This miniaturist hid whole stories in the gold-flecked margins of prayer books, turning the space between prayers into tiny dramas. In Annunciation in an Initial M, the angel’s wings look like folded parchment and the Virgin’s lap is a shelf of folded cloth, no bigger than a postage stamp. If you stand close to the Getty’s copy, you’ll catch your breath at how the gold leaf, punched with tiny dots, still catches the light seven centuries later.