Illuminator

“ The last, and by much the most splendid illumination, is that for which the artists of the middle age, and especially the old illuminators, seem to have reserved all their powers, and upon which they lavished all their stock of gold, ultramarine, and carmine. ”

“ I need scarcely say, that as the art of painting improved in Italy and the Netherlands, the illuminator's palette became enriched with several new and very brilliant colours;—such as the ultramarines and carmines (exceedingly scarce in early manuscripts) which make the books produced at Rome and in Northern Italy, during the 16th and 17th centuries, glow with a vivacity never previously attained. ”

“ The experienced illuminator will generally do his writing before he gets in the outline of his ornament, and he will frequently dispense with the transferring process altogether; but it would be by no means safe for a beginner to do so. ”

“ That there are abundant ways in the present day in which the modern illuminator may make use of his craft has been amply exemplified in the preceding pages. The work of the craftsman, of course, stands first and foremost, but it must be remembered that the machine has come to stay, and the artist must endeavour to realise something of the great possibilities that there are in this direction. ”

“ To the grace of youth it adds beauty, the beauty of adolescence. To fourteenth-century illumination we can give no higher praise than that it is beautiful. Not, indeed, because of its deliberate limitations, but in spite of them. For after ages have taught us that if in pure ornament and resplendent decorative completeness the pages of the fourteenth century cannot be surpassed, in miniature historiation it must take a second place. The skilled illuminators of the later schools are the masters of the mere picture. ”

“ There is a great deal of beautiful design in these letters; but the square border round them, while revealing their origin from illuminators' work, leaves over-large whites in the backgrounds, which call out for the completion that the illuminator's colour would have given them. ”

“ It consists in half of a short focused parabolic mirror, which concentrates all the light coming from the one side on to the object. To examine objects with objectives of high power and low free object distance, the apparatus for side-illumination is not sufficient, and a so-called vertical illuminator is used. ”

“ That persons having a knowledge of drawing can and will make better illuminators than those who have not, there can be no doubt; and the more accomplished the artist, the better illuminator he will make is also obvious. Yet the art of illumination may be practised by persons who may be but indifferent 23 artists in general design, and with a great deal of success ”

“ This is unquestionably a volume of equal interest and splendor; and, when it was fresh from the pencil of the illuminator, its effect must have been exquisite.42
BOOK OF TOURNAMENTS: No. 8204. 8vo. We have here a sort of miniature exhibition of the chief circumstances displayed in the previous and larger MS. It is questionless a very precious book; but has been cruelly cropt. The text and ornaments are clearly of the end of the fifteenth century; perhaps about 1470. Nothing can well exceed the brilliancy and power of many of the illuminations, which are very small and very perfect. ”

“ About a century later, the leading illuminators were Bartolomeo and Gherardo,—the former abbot of San Clemente, at Arrezzo, and the latter a Florentine painter and "miniatore," whom Vasari confounds with Attavante, a painter, engraver, and mosaicist. Of all the Italian artists who adopted the style of the illuminators, if they did not themselves illuminate, the most celebrated certainly are Fra Angelico da Fiesole [80] and Gentile da Fabriano. The majority of the works of both are little else than magnified miniatures of the highest merit. ”

“ To the practical illuminator, these fragments are of far higher importance than all the others to which we have as yet alluded, since, while of equal archæological interest, they constitute the earliest specimens from which really decorative illumination can be studied. [26]
Another illustration of the Eastern influence brought to bear upon Christian manuscripts of the age of Justinian, is furnished by the celebrated Syriac Gospels of the 6th century, written in the year 586 (one-and-twenty years after the emperor's death) , by Rabula, a scribe in the monastery of St. ”

“ This, however, is mixed up with a lot of straggling ornament which it is impossible to conceive as having been produced by any artist of the Middle Ages.
One can quite understand how this is so when one considers how so much of the work is done. Illuminated addresses are often executed by people who have had practically no training at all. One can scarcely complain if they are in bad taste when such is the case. If one has had a good grounding by studying the work of the ancient illuminators it is practically impossible172 to produce this type of work. ”

“ Whatever variations there may be, they can generally be accounted for according to locality and centre of production. We have instanced a few examples of the earlier time as showing the principal features of the style. Under the Emperor Charles the Great's grandson, Charles the Bald, Carolingian illumination reached its highest point of excellence, and the MSS. executed for him or his contemporaries accordingly give a correct idea of what Carolingian illuminators considered as good work. ”

“ Through their conscientious study of nature, both in landscape and in portrait subjects, a complete change was wrought in the miniatures of all manuscripts produced after their influence had had time to penetrate into the scriptoria and ateliers of the contemporary artist-scribes. Had not the invention of printing rapidly supervened, there can be no doubt that even more extraordinary results than followed the general appreciation of their graces as illuminators would have been ensured. ”

“ Wherever the Reformation extended throughout Europe, a corresponding destruction of ancient illuminated manuscripts took place, and in localities where fanaticism failed to do its work of devastation, indifference proved a consuming agent of almost equal energy; and, indeed, there is no more forcible illustration of the untiring zeal and industry of the illuminators of old, than the fact, that, after all that has been done to stamp out the sparks still lingering in their embers, their works should still glow with such shining lights in all the great public libraries of Europe. ”

“ 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 ”

“ Every possible scheme of decoration is to be found in these manuscripts; but in all cases the illuminator is careful to make his painted ornament grow out of and form, as it were, an integral part of the written text, which thus becomes not merely a book ornamented with pictures, but is a close combination of writing and illumination, forming one harmonious whole in a united scheme of decorative beauty [6] .
Monastic Scriptoria. The Scriptoria of Monasteries. ”

“ Gérard or Gheeraert of Bruges was a native of Oudewater in Holland; he was born about the middle of the fifteenth century, and settled in Bruges in the year 1483, when he became a member of the Guild of Saint John and Saint Luke, to which all painters and manuscript illuminators were obliged to belong. Gérard took the surname of David, and became a famous painter of triptychs and altar-pieces, as well as a skilful illuminator of manuscripts. Many fine panel-paintings by him still exist in Bruges and elsewhere [4] . ”

“ We seldom consider what life would be without our wonderful methods of illumination which turn night into day, and prolong the hours of work and pleasure. Yet it was not until the nineteenth century that the marvelous change was made from the short-lived candle to the more enduring oil lamp. Before the coming of the lamp, even in large cities like Paris, the only artificial light to guide the belated traveler at night was the candle required to be kept burning in an occasional window. ”

“ Fading Illumination. The farther we move from a light, the less strong, or intense, is the illumination which reaches us; the light of the street lamp on the corner fades and becomes dim before the middle of the block is reached, so that we look eagerly for the next lamp. The light diminishes in brightness much more rapidly than we realize, as the following simple experiment will show. Let a single candle [106] (Fig. 57) serve as our light, and at a distance of one foot from the candle place a photograph. ”

“ Our wonderful lamp is merely a poetical image of Science. The lamp of science dispels intellectual darkness, and floods the world with its all-penetrating light. The night-prowling ghouls, Ignorance and Superstition, dare not encounter its glancing rays, and descend shrieking into the abyss, while Industry toils in the glare, and seems to acquire new vigour whenever the flame increases in brilliancy.
The attendant genii of this wonderful lamp are those powers of the material world which have been subjugated by man—the Aladdin of our story. ”

“ As no one can doubt that the 14th century was the period during which illumination attained its highest perfection, not only in point of artistic spirit in design, but in the dexterous processes of execution as well, it has been considered that it might prove useful to the English student to supply him or her with as large a proportion as possible of illustration of that which we may really regard in matter of illuminating as our national style. ”

“ The great electric light of the intellect is turned off at the church door. On one day out of every seven the human lamps enter in utter darkness a field of superstition. During six days the light is turned full on the world of commerce, science, art, and literature, and these glow and grow and are examined by its rays. When, however, the signal tolls from the steeple on the seventh day, the light is turned off for that day, and for that topic alone; and then there is brought out once more the old tallow candle of ignorance that hides in shadow the cobwebs of undeveloped thought! ”

“ The torch, the candle, the lamp, the gas-light, the electric light,—these are the steps of the development of the lamp. And how marvelous a growth it is! How great the triumph over darkness! In the beginning a piece of wood burns with a dull flame, and fills the dingy wigwam or cave with soot and smoke; now, at the pressure of a button, the house is filled with a light that rivals the light of day, with not a particle of smoke or soot or harmful gas. Are there to be further triumphs in the art of lighting? Are we to have a light that shall drive out the electric light? ”

“ Lightning, the red demon that, from the dawn of Creation, has been rushing down its zigzag path through the clouds, as if intent only upon spreading death, metamorphosed into an errand-boy, brings us illumination from the sun and carries our messages around the globe. ”

“ That to which we shall confine our attention is a rather special one. Both its processes and its results are peculiar. Mere pictures or pretty ornamental letters in sweet colours and elegant drawing do not constitute illumination, though they do form essential contributions towards it; and, indeed, in the sixteenth century the clever practitioners who wished, in bright colours, to awaken up the old woodcuts used to call themselves illuminists, and the old German books which taught how the work should be done were called Illuminir bücher. ”

“ This Primordial Light is the source of all motion. But its motion is not change of place; it is due to the love of illumination which constitutes its very essence, and stirs it up, as it were, to quicken all things into life, by pouring out its own rays into their being. The number of illuminations which proceed from it is infinite. Illuminations of intenser brightness become, in their turn, the sources of other illuminations; and the scale of brightness gradually descends to illuminations too faint to beget other illuminations. ”

“ The artificial light is obtained in part from a row of crystal lamps on the cornice of the niche, in part, too, from the torch borne by the beautiful boy-angel who hovers in mid-air, yet another focus of illumination being the body of the dead Christ. ”

“ These objects light renders cognizable under their distinctions of form by irradiating them, that is, illuminating to a greater or less degree their obscurity and invisibility, and permitting certain parts to be more visible, namely, as they approach the spectator, and others, on the contrary, more obscure as they withdraw from him. For light and darkness, putting for the present on one side the particular colour of an object, is generally speaking due to the relative remoteness of the illuminated objects from us in their specific degree of illumination. ”

“ To-day we feel aggrieved if our lamps are not of many candle-power, and protest that our sight will be ruined by what one hundred and fifty years ago would have seemed a marvel of illumination. In the case of lighting necessity has been the mother of invention. The tendency of modern life is to turn night into day. ”

“ A LITTLE lamp can send but a brief and feeble ray,
The great lights bravely beam, and their radiance far away
Is the comfort of the nations and the furtherance of the day.
All men remember when the great lights were lit,
The day is kept in honor, and they name it as they sit
And watch the guiding flame, thanking and blessing it.
But the small and struggling lights which a breath of storm might kill,
Each fain to light a continent, but doomed to smallness still,
Is there no one to praise them for their service of goodwill?
Yes, one, the Lord of all, who is the source of Light ”