Bernard Quaritch

“ The particular merit of the Irish is that they seem to have developed (out of Roman semi-uncials) a handsome minuscule form of writing earlier than any other people. The cursive of the Romans had always been an ugly and ill-decipherable script; and it was only in the seventh century that even the Italians, under barbarian pressure, evolved a fairly good readable minuscule. The minuscules of Gaul and Western Germany, called Merowingian, were still in a formless and primitive rudeness at the time when the Irish had already attained the elegance of practised penmanship. ”

“ It was really this English phase of decorative art which blossomed into Anglo-Norman in the twelfth century.
The French schools were still Carolingian and splendid, but their pre-eminence was not maintained after the breaking up of the empire of Charles the Great. The revolutions of the ninth century led to the making of nations. France ceased to be the Gallo-Roman province of a Frankish monarchy. A French language and a French nation emerged into existence in the tenth century, but the grand ornamental and calligraphic work of the Franco-Gallic time was no longer equalled. ”

“ When with the tenth century France and Germany emerged as two distinct nations from the chaos of the Frankish empire, their modes of book-decoration began to diverge. The rudeness of an earlier time remains, with a good deal of spirit, in the illustrative designs produced in Germany; the beauty of French work began to decay, while the English was at its best. Winchester, Canterbury, and Glastonbury were the real centres of English art at the middle of the tenth century; the Norsemen having destroyed the Anglo-Irish monasteries in the north. ”

“ It was the wealth of Ghent, Bruges, Antwerp, and Brussels which attracted talent to a warmer air in which it could grow and flourish, on the border land between the Celt and the Teuton, with all the advantages derivable from either side. In the same way the riches and luxury of Venice, Florence, Rome, Naples, Verona, Cremona, Padua, stimulated the faculties of men who had inherited the traditions of Græco-Roman art. It was a brilliant autumn in the annals of illumination, but a short one, by reason of the changes which the new art of Printing had brought about in all things. ”

“ Sentimental writers have been, from time immemorial, in the habit of scouting at wealth and of pouring enthusiastic praise upon penury, as though the two conditions were equivalent to vice and virtue in morals, to dulness and genius in intellect. It is quite true that an impoverished state of society produces better poetry than a rich one; but it is equally true that the finest artistic work is born amid luxurious surroundings. ”

“ The Western Germans had nothing to do with writing till they conquered the Welshmen of Gaul. Consequently, we proceed to the Gothic alphabet.
After repeated attacks on the Roman empire in the third century, and repeated defeats, the Goths had extended their seats southwards, and were resident, in a partly Christianised state, in the lands north and south of the Danube. Wulfila, or Ulfila, a Goth, said to have been born in Cappadocia, a man of great ability, who was able to preach in Gothic, in Greek, and in Latin, thought the time had come to Christianise his countrymen completely. ”

“ The English, the French, the German, the Spanish, and the Italian, had all certain qualities in common, but the first two were most nearly akin. The other three schools produced in the eleventh and twelfth centuries books containing pictures, in which the composition is more remarkable than the drawing, and the painting is full of barbaric contrasts of colour. At all times, fine work was to be found in Italy, but only in isolated examples, and Italy as a whole underwent the same barbarisation as the other countries. From that stage the English and the French were the first to emerge. ”

“ The requirements of that reading public among the Greeks, led to the disuse of skins for the purpose of writing, since only a cheaper and more plentiful material could satisfy the demand. Egyptian papyrus being both cheap and plentiful, it was adopted and remained in use for over a thousand years among the people who spoke Greek and Latin. Books upon vellum or parchment—charta pergamena, an improved form of the old skins—were only produced occasionally, as luxuries, between the second century B.C. and the fifth century of our era. ”

“ They delight the eye with a fuller satisfaction than even the best of the Flemish illuminations. The latter we examine carefully, with a continual increase of admiration; while we enjoy the harmonious beauty of the Florentine, we feel that the critic's functions are set aside.
The writing of the late Italian MSS., among which classical texts rival the books of prayers in the elegance of their adornment, was more frequently Roman than gothic, but a fine black-letter hand survived into the sixteenth century, especially at Venice. ”

“ In the minuscule writing of Greek, which is usually supposed to have come into use about the end of the eighth century, there never was the same calligraphical character as the uncials of an earlier time had exhibited, nor the same desire to attain symmetrical beauty as was shown over and over again in the manuscripts of Western Europe. The best writing of Greek minuscules belongs to the ninth and tenth centuries of our era, in which a sufficient amount of practice had been gained to ensure regularity of form. ”

“ As to the cuneiform inscriptions, the various Semitic tongues furnished means of comparison for Assyrian texts, the Persian and "Zend" for old Persic and Median, and certain cuneiform vocabularies were discovered which rendered it possible to understand a third language, the most ancient of them all, which had been utterly unknown even by name. From the time of Christ, perhaps even before it, down to sixty years ago, the languages and monuments of Egypt and Chaldæa had never been looked upon by the eye of intelligence. The mystery of ages is a mystery no more. ”

“ Venetian examples of such miniatures are remarkably beautiful—the beauty mingled with a certain gravity of manner; those which are of Roman origin have an air of masterly splendour; but those which were produced at Florence between 1480 and 1510 are so lovely as to upset our critical judgment in comparing them with work done at Bruges. In the border-illustration there never was any resemblance between the work of Italy and that of other countries, and there can be no hesitation in deciding between them in favour of Italy as more appropriately decorative. ”

“ Of the various species of national writing which were evolved from Roman calligraphy, and which, from the seventh century onwards, are divided by palæographers into Lombardic and Visigothic, Frankish (Merowingian) , and Irish (Hibernian and Anglo-Saxon) , the Irish was probably the first to attain a distinct type of its own. There would be inherent probability in the notion that the Irish alphabet and the Irish style of ornament were created in Britain and transferred to Ireland in the fifth century when the English arrived. ”

“ The real origin of the artistic decoration is unmistakable. It is what we call Byzantine, but ought rather to be called Ægypto-Grecian. The people of Abyssinia, who were mainly Southern Arabs or Sabæans, received their instruction in art along with their Christianity a few centuries after the beginning of the era, and they have never abandoned them. As for the writing which appears on the plate, it is in the old Geez or Ethiopic language, and descended from that of the Sabæan people whose monumental inscriptions in Himyaritic language and characters are now attracting considerable interest. ”

“ The quantity of gold that gave magnificence to the work of the miniaturist in Flanders and France in the last quarter of the fifteenth century became excessive. It was a relief to the eye when this blaze of gold receded before the outcome of late Flemish art. Scarcely any school produced work comparable for delicacy and truth to the miniatures painted in prayerbooks at Bruges and Ghent between 1490 and 1520. ”

“ It is usually supposed by those who see the difficulty attaching to the use of the name Lombardic, that the mode of writing so styled was used in the kingdom of the Longbeards, but died out in its chief home after the conquest by the Franks, and only maintained a continued existence in the Neapolitan duchies held by princes of Lombardic origin. The suspicion hinted at above becomes stronger when we review these facts. The Lombards were a far rougher and more uncultivated race than the Goths, and found a Gothic-Roman script in use in Italy when they entered to destroy the kingdom of Theodoric. ”

“ Beautiful examples of blended writing and decoration were produced in England in the ninth century by Anglian and Irish calligraphers in the north, and by Saxon writers in the south. In York and Durham, and Lindisfarne, the style and the motifs of ornament were still thoroughly Irish; in the south, although the late Roman had conquered the Celtic, their collision had produced a singularly fine type of illumination, reminiscent of Byzantine work, but much more free and natural. That art had already beautified the Carolingian French school ”

“ The miniatures are good, but not excellent; better in composition than in design, and showing grave deficiencies with regard to perspective. They are, however, well executed and well painted; and the borders are remarkably elegant. The conventional large foliage, of architectonic character, is admirably disposed upon small and appropriate fields of gold; and the twining branchlets that bear tiny buds and small leaves and flowers are not so crowded as to hide the vellum ground. The border is indeed a fine decorative composition, without a fault, and thoroughly English in style. ”

“ The writing is usually square and gothic, but with few of the oblique angles and little projecting points that are seen in Western gothic. The Lombardic hand of Eastern and Southern Italy, had left no trace in the script which succeeded it. The round and beautiful Carolingian letter of North Italy had a distinct influence in moulding the Italian gothic, and preserving its freedom from Teutonic angularities. It had lasted longer here than in other countries, but Spanish Visigothic was also a late lingerer, and did not succumb to French influence till the thirteenth century. ”

“ It is sufficient glory for them to have converted the artistic movement of the time into a national school of painting unmistakable with any other, at a time when the calligraphical schools of central and Southern France, under an enlightened Frankish emperor, and with far superior opportunities, were labouring for a Gallo-Roman renaissance. ”

“ The Britons of the fifth century, at least all over the Southern half of the island, were a Romanised people as much as the Gauls, and it would be ridiculous to expect Celtic provincial art in the home of Roman culture. They were exterminated or absorbed in the east and middle of the island by the Germanic invaders, and they were harried out of the west by their Cumri kindred from the north, and by pirate Scots from Ireland. ”