J. Henry Middleton

“ The accessories are hardly less beautiful; the Gothic arches and pinnacles of the New Jerusalem, the vine plants and other trees and flowers, designed with a perfect balance between decorative conventionalism and realistic truth, and last of all the sumptuous backgrounds covered with delicate diapers or scroll-work in gold and blue and crimson, all unite the whole composition into one perfect harmony, like a mosaic of gleaming gems, fixed in a matrix of pure, shining gold.
Machine-made art. ”

“ In the fifteenth century the manuscript art of central and northern Italy, especially Siena, Florence, Venice and Milan, rose to a pitch of beauty and perfection which left it quite without rival in any country in the world. As was the case in writing of the glories of such manuscripts as the French Apocalypses of the fourteenth century, words are inadequate to describe the refined beauty of the best Italian manuscripts of this period. As has been already pointed out Italy was late in beginning her artistic Renaissance ”

“ Western Europe, Asia Minor, Persia and Egypt all contributed elements both of design and of technical skill, which combined to create the new and for a while vigorously flourishing school of Byzantine art. The dull lifeless forms of Roman art in its extreme degradation were again quickened into new life and beauty in the hands of these Byzantine craftsmen, who became as it were the heirs and inheritors of the art and the technique of all the chief countries of antiquity. ”

“ Thus, for example, the little bosses and studs of gold, which are strewn so thickly among the foliage in the illuminated borders of Italian manuscripts of the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries, are convex in shape, like an old-fashioned watch-glass, and each boss reflects a brilliant speck of light whatever the direction may be in which the light falls upon the page. ”

“ For this reason in examining an illuminated manuscript, or other early work of art, to discover what use the artist has made of actual study from nature, one should always take into account the influences which made him see each natural object in a special, personal way, and we must not argue that because the drawing now looks very unreal that it may not possibly have been as careful and accurate a study from life as the painter's eye and hand could produce. ”

“ In most even of the best productions of the guild-scribes of the fifteenth century one sees occasional signs of weariness and haste; and in the cheap manuscripts, which were turned out by the thousand in France and Flanders during the latter part of the fifteenth century, there is a coarseness of touch and a mechanical monotony of style, which remind one of the artistic results of the triumphant commercialism of the nineteenth century. ”

“ Celtic art in Britain. In later times, when the Celtic style of illumination was transplanted to England, gold was to some extent introduced, but in the finest Irish manuscripts of the best period, the latter half of the seventh century, gold is completely absent. Nevertheless, so great was the decorative genius of these Irish monks that, even without burnished gold and silver, their illuminated pages quite equal, not only in artistic beauty, but even in mere splendour of effect, any illuminations that have ever been produced. ”

“ All through the fifteenth century, alike in the manuscripts of the Florentine, Sienese and Venetian schools, the same purely conventional forms of foliage were used, with great curling leaves, alternately blue and red, lighted up by the jewel-like studs and bosses of burnished gold. ”

“ A melancholy example of the existing want of taste and lack of appreciation of what is beautiful in art is afforded by the fact that such a thing as a manuscript signed and illuminated by Giulio Clovio would fetch a far larger sum than so perfect a masterpiece of poetic art as a fine example of a fourteenth century Anglo-Norman Apocalypse. ”

“ It may be interesting to consider what were the causes that made the illuminated manuscripts of the mediaeval period among the most perfect and beautiful works of art that the world has ever produced. No one can examine the manuscripts of any of the chief European countries down to the fourteenth century without a feeling of amazement at their almost unvarying perfection of execution, the immense fertility of fancy in their design, and the utterly unsparing labour that was lavished on their production. ”

“ Technical skill. In architecture, in mosaic work, in metal work of all kinds, in textile weaving, the craftsmen of New Rome reached the highest level of technical skill and decorative beauty. So also a new and brilliant school of manuscript illumination was soon formed, and Constantinople became for several centuries the chief centre for the production of manuscripts of all kinds.
The Oriental element in Byzantine art shows itself in a love of extreme splendour, the most copious use of gold and silver and of the brightest colours. ”

“ The skilful use of gold both in the pigment form, and in leaf on a raised enamel-like ground, is specially characteristic of German and Dutch manuscripts of the fifteenth century. In some manuscripts very beautiful borders are executed in delicate scroll-work with fine lines and dots, all of burnished gold, the effect of which is very magnificent. ”

“ The difference is very great between the best and the inferior kinds of pens; the best quality appears to have been made from the long single joint of a reed.
There is no evidence that quill pens were used in classical times, but it is difficult to believe that so natural an expedient never occurred to any ancient scribe, especially when the use of vellum for manuscripts came in; for papyrus paper the softer reed pen would be more convenient than a quill, and indeed for all the earlier sort of Greek and Latin writing in large uncial characters. ”

“ Before long this great extension of the art of illumination, and the fact that it became a trade, a method of earning a livelihood, like any other craft, led to a serious decadence in the art. Though wealthy patrons were able to pay large prices for richly illuminated manuscripts, thus keeping up the production of very elaborate and artistically valuable works of miniature art, yet the practical result was a growing decadence of style and workmanship. ”

“ This exquisite manuscript, which is in the British Museum, contains, before the Psalter, a large number of miniatures of Biblical scenes executed in outline, treated with delicate washes of transparent colour. The Psalter is illuminated in quite a different style, with brilliant gold and colours in all the miniatures and borders, which are painted with wonderful delicacy of touch, unsurpassed by the best French work. A Bestiary is introduced into the margins of the Psalter; and at the end there are beautiful paintings of New Testament scenes. ”

“ Perhaps the most sumptuous use of gold leaf is to be seen in some of the early fourteenth century French manuscripts, in which large miniatures are painted with an unbroken background of solid-looking burnished gold, with a mirror-like power of reflexion. ”

“ With regard to books on the subject of early bindings; it is much to be regretted that existing works, of which there are a great many, especially in French, all begin just about the period when bindings of the greatest interest and the truest artistic value were no longer made. Plenty has been written about the costly bindings in which Grolier, Maioli, and other wealthy book-buyers had their purchases encased, but no work exists on the bindings of the mediaeval period, when, frequently, the covers of a manuscript were as much a labour of love as the illuminated pages within. ”

“ In the main the designs are feeble in composition and weak in drawing, belonging rather to the latest decadence of Roman classical art than to the yet undeveloped Byzantine style, which was soon to grow into great artistic spirit and strong decorative power, a completely new birth of aesthetic conceptions, the brilliance of which is the more striking from its following so closely on the degraded, lifeless, worn-out art of the Western Empire. ”

“ The Norsemen were far from being a literary race and it was not in the form of manuscript illuminations that Irish art was introduced into Norway and Denmark, but rather in the rich gold and silver jewellery with which the Viking chiefs adorned themselves, and also on a larger scale in the magnificently decorative reliefs which were carved on the wooden planks which formed the frames or architraves of the doors of the Scandinavian wooden churches in the eleventh and twelfth centuries, after the worship of the Thunderer had been replaced by the Faith of the White Christ. ”

“ According to Vasari, the same Camaldolese Monastery produced another manuscript illuminator whose skill was hardly inferior to that of Don Silvestro. This was Don Lorenzo, who appears to have been born about 1370, and to have died about 1425 [7] . Examples of his skill, also in the form of large choir-books, are preserved in the Laurentian library at Florence; they are rich with miniatures of great beauty, and, like Don Silvestro's paintings, show a lavish expenditure of time and patience in the exquisite minuteness with which they are finished. ”

“ The best kinds of papyrus paper are close in texture, with a smooth surface, very pleasant to write upon with a reed pen, and adapted to receive miniature paintings of great refinement and delicacy of touch. To prevent the ink spreading or soaking into the paper, it was as a final process sometimes soaked in size made of fish-bones or gum and water, exactly as modern linen paper is sized. The colour of the papyrus is a pale brown, very pleasant to the eye, and excellent as a background to the painted decorations. ”

“ Red pigments. Red and blue are by far the most important of the colours used in illuminated manuscripts, and it is wonderful to see what variety of effect is often produced by the use of these two colours only.
Vermilion and minium. The chief red pigments used by illuminators are vermilion (cinnabar or sulphuret of mercury) and red lead (minium) , from which the words miniator and miniature were derived, as is explained above at page 31 [10] .
Both these pigments are very brilliant and durable reds, the more costly vermilion is the more beautiful of the two; it has a slightly orange tint. ”

“ The King himself was an enthusiastic patron of all the arts, ranging from manuscript illumination to the construction of such a fabric as Westminster Abbey; and the lesser arts of life, such as weaving, embroidery, metal work, together with stained glass, mural painting and other forms of decoration, were all brought in England to a wonderful pitch of perfection between 1250 and 1300. ”

“ The later class of stamped bindings, belonging rather to printed books than to manuscripts, is often very beautiful and decorative in character, the whole surface of the cover being completely embossed in relief by the skilful application of a great number of punches used in various combinations, so as to form one large and perfectly united design. In these later times, from about the middle of the sixteenth century the tendency was to cut larger designs on one punch or die; and the leather or parchment was softened by boiling so that a large surface could be embossed at one operation. ”

“ The drawing, the pose, the colours of the drapery of every Saint, and the scheme of composition of all sacred figure subjects came gradually to be defined by ecclesiastic rules, which each painter was bound to obey. Thus it happens that during the many centuries which are covered by the Byzantine style of art, though there are periods of decay and revival of artistic skill, yet in style there is the most remarkable monotony. This makes it specially difficult to judge from internal evidence of the date of a Byzantine painting. ”

“ Naturally, when a wealthy patron ordered a magnificent book, he was not always willing to wait several years for its completion, as must have been necessary when the whole of a sumptuous manuscript was the work of one man.
Again, it was not an uncommon thing for unfinished manuscripts to be sent to Bruges, Ghent and other centres of the illuminator's art from various distant towns and countries, especially from France, Italy and Spain, in order that they might be decorated with borders and miniatures by one of the Flemish miniaturists. ”

“ The influx of Greek exiles into Florence, after the conquest of Constantinople by the Ottoman Turks in 1453, led to the famous revival of classical learning, and for a while made Florence not only the artistic but the intellectual centre of the world. ”

“ Not only the distinctly metallic motives of ornament are faithfully copied, but even the manner in which the gold-workers built up their elaborate manuscript covers by the insertion of separate little plates of gold filagree and enamel side by side on a large plate or matrix is exactly reproduced by the illuminator. Italian influence. As in the case of the Lindisfarne Gospels, the figures of the Psalmist which are introduced are very superior to any figures which occur in the purely Irish manuscripts, showing the distinct influence of Italian manuscripts of debased classical style. ”

“ It is very strong, of a fine creamy tint, and sized [13] with great skill, so as to have a beautiful glossy texture. For the illuminator's purpose it appears to have been almost as good as vellum. It even receives the raised mordant for burnished gold of the highest beauty and brilliance.
The very small quantity of good paper that is now manufactured, mainly for artistic purposes, is made by hand in exactly the same way that was employed in the fourteenth or fifteenth century.
Most paper is now made by machinery, and as a rule contains more esparto grass than pure linen fibre. ”

“ Towards the close of the twelfth century the Gothic style of architecture, with its pointed arches and quadripartite vaults, was brought to England by the Cistercian monks of northern France, and soon spread far and wide throughout the kingdom.
The artists of this century began to study the human form, its pose and movement, and also in their drapery learnt to depict gracefully designed folds with much truth and with a keen sense of beauty [3] .
Anglo-Norman school. ”

“ The human form. Though these Celtic manuscripts show such marvellous dexterity of touch and unerring firmness of line in every minute and complicated pattern, yet the monastic artist appears to have been absolutely incapable of representing the human form. ”

“ Another noticeable point is that the modern pecuniary values of manuscripts, even those which are bought only as works of art, are by no means in proportion to their real artistic merits. Manuscripts of the finest period of the illuminator's art, the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries, are now sold for very much smaller sums than the immeasurably inferior but more showy and over-elaborated manuscripts of the period of decadence in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries. ”

“ As has been already mentioned, the old classical forms survived in the manuscript miniatures of Italy for many centuries with but little alteration.
A slow, but steady degradation in the forms of classic art began to take place about the fifth or sixth century; the fact being that no art can for long remain stationary; there must be either advance or decay, and when the habit of copying older forms has once become the established rule an artistic degradation soon becomes inevitable.
Italian decadence. ”

“ Even in Italy, Cimabue and his assistants were still labouring in the fetters of Byzantine conventionalism, and produced no works which for jewel-like beauty of colour and grace of form were quite equal to the paintings of England under Edward I.
English sculpture. In sculpture too England was no less pre-eminent; no continental works of the time are equal in combined dignity and beauty, both of the heads and of the drapery, to the bronze effigies of Henry III. and Queen Eleanor of Castile on the north side of Edward the Confessor's Chapel at Westminster. ”