Illuminated manuscript

“ Illumination and printing. Thus we see that as early as about the year 1400 the printer's art had begun to supplement that of the manuscript illuminator [19] ; and the two arts continued to work, as it were, hand in hand till after the close of the fifteenth century when the illumination of manuscripts ceased to be a real living art and gradually degenerated into a mere appendage to individual pomp and luxury. ”

“ These common manuscript Horae are monotonous in form and detail; they nearly always have the same set of miniatures, which are {142}often coarse in detail and harsh in colour; and the illuminated borders, with which they are lavishly though cheaply decorated, have the same forms of foliage and fruit repeated again and again in dozens of manuscripts, which all look as if they had come out of the same workshop. ”

“ A school of magnificently decorative art began then to be developed, and though the drawing of the human figure was still weak, yet effects of the noblest decorative character were produced by manuscript illuminators, foreshadowing that marvellous climax of manuscript art which was reached in the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries. ”

“ Vehicles used. The coloured pigments of the illuminators. Though mediaeval manuscripts are splendid and varied in colour to the highest possible degree, yet all this wealth of decorative effect was produced by a very few pigments, and with the simplest of media, such as size made by boiling down shreds of vellum or fish-bones [1] , or else gum-arabic, or occasionally white of egg or a mixture both of the yoke and the white [2] . In the main the technique of manuscript illumination is the same as that of panel pictures executed in distemper (tempera) . ”

“ Small horns to hold black and red ink; see fig. 53 on page 209.
Colour-box, palette, pigments, gold leaf and media of various kinds.
Sponge and pumice-stone for erasures. Paintings of scribes. Miniatures representing a scribe writing a manuscript are the commonest of all subjects in several classes of illuminated manuscripts. For example the first capital of Saint Jerome's Prologue in the historiated Anglo-Norman Vulgates almost always has a very minute painting of a monastic scribe [22] , seated, writing on a sloping desk, with his pen in one hand and his penknife in the other [23] . ”

“ In early times it appears to have been usual, or at least not uncommon, for the same hand to write the text and add the painted illuminations, but when the production of illuminated manuscripts came mostly into secular hands, the trades of the scribe and the illuminator were usually practised by different people; and in late times a further division still took place, and the miniaturist frequently became separated from the decorative illuminator. ”

“ Though the miniatures are poor, the writing of the text and the music might well pass for the work of a fifteenth century scribe.↑ A valuable but by no means exhaustive list of manuscript illuminators is given by J. W. Bradley, Dictionary of Miniaturists, Illuminators and Caligraphers, London, 1887. The names of Italian miniaturists are specially numerous, partly because Italian manuscripts are more frequently signed by their illuminators than the manuscripts of other countries. ”

“ These Parisian prayer-books gradually superseded the coarse manuscript Horae which were still produced in the early part of the sixteenth century; and the latest examples of these vellum-printed books, the work of Geoffroi Tory and others as late as 1546, came to be sold without any assistance from the hand, one can hardly say the art, of the illuminator in his extreme decadence.
Latest decadence. In a feeble way the art of writing and illuminating manuscripts, as a sort of plaything for the wealthy, lingered on in Paris till the seventeenth century. ”

“ 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 best material upon which to write a manuscript book is undoubtedly vellum, although fine hand-made paper may be substituted if it is not desirable to go to the expense of procuring vellum for this purpose. A paper that is soft and flexible should be selected in preference to one that is hard and stiff. Anything approaching cardboard should be avoided.
Frontispiece of Illuminated MS. of Blake’s “Songs of Innocence.”
BY SIDNEY FARNSWORTH.
217 The first thing to decide in writing a manuscript book is the size of the page. ”

“ With a view to fostering the production of fine illuminated manuscripts he introduced into this country, and especially into the royal and monastic libraries of Winchester, a large number of Roman manuscripts with the usual illuminations of the debased classic type. This, no doubt, helped to encourage the production of miniatures in outline such as those in the Utrecht Psalter [92] . Feeble colouring.Another variety of Anglo-Saxon manuscript illumination, executed during the first half of the eleventh century, consists first of all of a pen drawing in brown outline ”

“ A test as to whether an artist has succeeded is to observe, when the book is shown to anyone, whether the words are noticed at all, or if the decoration only is admired without any apprehension as to what the words are about. If the latter is the case, then, to some extent, the artist has failed. A manuscript that has been illuminated in the right spirit should enable the reader to understand and appreciate the words better. ”

“ The Black Death.On the whole the style of figure painting in English manuscripts deteriorated very distinctly after the ravages caused by the Black Death in the middle of the fourteenth century; that is to say the average of excellence became lower; and, especially in the fifteenth century, a good deal of very coarse and inferior manuscript illumination was produced. On the other hand there were some illuminators in England whose work is not surpassed by that of any contemporary French or Flemish artist. ”

“ A fine typical example of English manuscript art at the close of the twelfth century is to be seen in the so-called Huntingfield Psalter, which was executed, probably in some monastic house in Yorkshire, a little before 1200 A.D. [5] It contains 68 miniatures of very fine style, delicately painted on backgrounds partially of gold; the subjects are taken from both the Old and the New Testament, beginning with the Creation of the World. ”

“ Other elaborate examples of Nicholas Jarry's work exist in the Paris library, mostly painted in grisaille.
Early printing.A few words on the connection between early printing and the art of manuscript illumination may not here be out of place. The inventors of printing, Gutenberg, Fust and Schoeffer, appear to have had no idea of producing cheap books by their new art, but that for a fixed sum they could produce a more magnificent and beautiful book than a scribe could for the same price. ”

“ Realistic backgrounds.Last of all come the realistic backgrounds, with pictorial effects of distance and aerial perspective, often very skilful and even beautiful in effect, but not so strongly decorative or so perfectly suited to manuscript illumination as the more conventional backgrounds of an earlier date. ”

“ 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. ”

“ The Dukes of Burgundy and the Kings of France, towards the close of the fourteenth and the first half of the fifteenth century, numbered many illuminators among their regular paid adherents. In some cases the artist was permanently engaged, and passed his whole life in the service of one Prince; while in other cases famous illuminators were hired for a few months or years, when the patron wanted a specially magnificent manuscript either for his own use, or as a royal gift on the occasion of a marriage, a coronation or other great event. ”

“ A scribe could write on the soft white metal with a sharp stilus almost as easily and rapidly as if he were using pen and ink on paper, and the manuscript thus produced would have the advantage of extreme durability. ”

“ MS. Chronicles.One rather abnormal class of manuscript, which belongs both to this period and the following (the fifteenth) century, consists of French or Latin Chronicles of the World beginning with the Creation and reaching down to recent times, written and illuminated with numerous miniature paintings on great rolls of parchment, often measuring from fifty to sixty feet in length. These are usually rather coarse in execution. ”

“ The two classes of painting acted and reacted upon one another; and in some cases, as is indicated below [196] , the more important art of painting on a large scale owed more to the manuscript illuminators than has commonly been acknowleged.
School of Milan.Milan, especially under Duke Ludovico and other members of the Sforza family, was an active centre of manuscript illumination. Some very beautiful late manuscripts exist with miniatures which show the influence of Leonardo da Vinci and his pupil Bernardino Luini ”

“ Revival of art in Germany in the eleventh century; the Missal of the Emperor Henry II.; the designs used for stained glass; the advance of manuscript art under Frederic Barbarossa; grotesque monsters; examples of fine German illuminations of the twelfth century; their resemblance to mural paintings; the school of the Van Eycks; the Grimani Breviary; Gérard David of Bruges; examples of Flemish miniatures; the use of gold; grotesque figures; the influence of manuscript art on the painters of altar-pieces; the school of Cologne; triptych by the elder Holbein; book illuminated by Albert Dürer ”

“ Fig. 28 shows part of a border from a manuscript of this class, a Book of Hours executed for the Duke de Berri; the typical pointed "ivy-leaves" grow from each of the quatrefoils which are introduced to hold the arms and initials of the owner. It comes from the same manuscript as the illumination shown in fig. 25. ”

“ And not only are the beautiful ornaments and decorative features of illuminated manuscripts valuable as supplying us with correct information as to the system of embellishment regarded by the best artists of each period as harmonizing most perfectly with the structural styles prevalent in their days; but in the measure of their permanent beauty they are no less valuable to us as indications of what is excellent for all time. ”

“ As no book or document was approved unless it had some ornamented and illuminated initials or capital letters, there was no want of illuminators. The workmen scribes and transcribers were, perhaps without exception, caligraphers, and the illuminators for the most part artists. Beautifully written and richly illuminated manuscripts on vellum became objects of luxury which were eagerly bought and treasured up by princes and people of distinction. ”

“ Though by far the majority of the illuminated manuscripts of the Middle Ages are written on vellum, yet paper was occasionally used, long before the fifteenth century, when its manufacture was largely developed to supply the demand created by the invention of printing. ”

“ They are executed with a reed pen in hieroglyphic writing on long rolls of papyrus, and are copiously illuminated with painted miniatures illustrating the subject of the text, drawn with much spirit and coloured in a very finely decorative way. Immense numbers of these Egyptian illuminated manuscripts still exist in a more or less fragmentary condition. One of the most perfect of these is the Book of the Dead of Ani, a royal scribe, dating from the fourteenth century B.C., now in the British Museum. ”

“ Anglo-Norman manuscripts of the Vulgate; the style of {viii}their illuminations; manuscripts produced in Benedictine monasteries; unity of style; various kinds of background in miniatures; magnificent manuscripts of the Psalter; the Tenison Psalter; manuscripts of the Apocalypse; their extraordinary beauty; their contrast to machine-made art; English manuscripts of the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries; the results of the Black Death; the Poyntz Horae; the Lectionary of Lord Lovel; the characteristics of English ornament; the introduction of portrait figures; the Shrewsbury manuscript ”

“ 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. ”

“ The earliest printed books were illuminated, spaces which had been formerly left by the copyist were now reserved by the printer, and the whole work when it left his hands was given over to the artist; then the subjects were engraven on wood, and transferred to the vellum by means of ink and the press; but the manuscript style was still preserved, and the closest imitation of written volumes was retained by the early printers, and with such dexterity that it is not an easy thing to detect some of the earliest printed books from manuscripts. ”

“ That foreigners were freely employed there can be no doubt, but that the works which were executed by them could not have been executed by Englishmen, no one can with safety assert, who has traced with any considerable care the gradual development of English art through a series of English illuminated manuscripts.
That illumination was excessively popular in England during the 14th century among the leading families, is proved by the numbers of coats of arms emblazoned in many of the most remarkable English manuscripts. ”