Illuminated Manuscripts
By Adele Kenny
Reprinted with the kind permission of Antiques & Auction News, July 2006
and The Paper and Advertising Collector, February 2007
Copyright © 2006 & 2007. All rights reserved.
From the seventh through the thirteenth centuries, nearly every Bible, Book of the Hours, Psalter, Breviary, Missal, and hagiographic work was laboriously hand-copied by a European monk in a room called and scriptorium. Set up in monastery and cathedral cloisters, scriptoria were partitioned into small cubicles in which monks spoke the words aloud as they copied them, a process closely associated with prayer and a form of meditation.
Today, these books are known as illuminated manuscripts because of their rich painted decoration. The term “illuminated” derived from the Latin illuminare, meaning “to adorn” and related to oratory or prose style. They are also called eluminures or miniatures, with the latter term taken not from size but from the Latin minum, a red pigment used in paint. These illustrations generally fall into three classifications: (1) rubrics or letters (elaborately decorated with vines, tendrils, or foliate or geometric forms), historical initials containing narrative images, and inhabited initials containing human or animal forms; (2) borders or marginal decoration (marginalia); and (3) miniatures or small pictures incorporated into the text or spread across whole or partial pages.
Most illuminated manuscripts were written on vellum, a very fine and durable grade of sheep, goat, or calfskin. The material was costly and required a repeated curing process of soaking in clear water, immersing in a lime solution, scraping hairs, and sun-drying until the vellum was completely clean and flexible enough for use.
The monks made pens from natural goose, crow, or turkey quills and, later, iron. Black ink (a mixture of lampblack and a fixing agent such as water or oil) was used most often, but an encaustic black (an acidic iron gall mixture) that etched indelibly into the vellum was also used. Colored inks were usually red or blue (although other colors were available and were used in the most lavish presentations), and accents were added in gold leaf or gold ink.
Because literacy in Europe was in its infancy, the relationship between script and art was integral to the illuminated manuscripts’ visuality, and aesthetic conceptions required that the calligraphy be carried out with painstaking care to ensure that harmony of size and shape was achieved. One monk could toil for years on a single Bible chapter. Created as acts of religious devotion, the manuscripts were not merely illustrated reading materials and, for the copyist monks, the technique of illumination was less about creating art than it was about releasing the light of truth from the text. The glosses, commentary, border designs, and other ornamentation were added to reveal the inner qualities of the text so the text and decoration were united in the truth of God’s word.
As early as the fifth century, miniaturist schools were formed in Syrian and Mesopotamian monasteries, drawing inspiration from Greek art and Oriental traditions. The Syriac Evangeliary (by the monk Rubula in Mesopotamia, c. 586) is a noteworthy work of this school. The most celebrated, world-renowned illuminated manuscript was produced between the seventh and ninth centuries in Ireland. Known as the Book of Kells, it is a large format codex of the Latin gospels, housed in Dublin’s Trinity College.
The eighth and ninth century Iconoclastic Controversy in the Byzantine Church resulted in the mutilation and destruction of many illuminated manuscripts. In Europe, manuscripts of this period were ornamented with initial letters, simple in early examples and later enhanced by foliage, animals, and small figures. During the ninth and tenth centuries, Charlemagne was responsible for forming schools of miniature painting in his empire’s major monasteries, and Carolingian illuminations generally display Irish and Anglo-Saxon influences, along with elements of ancient and Oriental art.
By the beginning of the eleventh century, illuminated manuscripts were characterized by the development of large initials and variously sized marginalia. Human figures began to assume increasing importance. Naturalism and anachronism (particularly in clothing styles) appeared in many illuminations of this period.
Thirteenth century illumination, like calligraphy, was no longer restricted to European monastic production as lay illuminators began to establish studios throughout Europe. At the same time, text became almost subordinate to painting as in the case of “picture Bibles” comprised of series of miniatures, and “sermon Bibles” that were pictorial summaries of scripture verses. The moralisée was a form of pictorial Bible in which text relating to Biblical events and corresponding “moralizations” were copied in two columns with eight illuminations per page. Gothic ornamentation (including such devices as roses, trefoils, quatrefoils, gables, and pinnacles) provided design elements for illuminations of this period and were often set on gold backgrounds.
During the early fourteenth century, a new school of border illumination inspired by nature began to take form, and traces of Italian architectural influence of a mixed Gothic disposition were expressed in such manuscripts as the Book of Miracles of Our Lady. English illuminators produced such manuscripts as Queen Mary’s Psalter which belonged to Mary Tudor and contains more than two hundred Old Testament scenes bordered by foliage as well as by scenes of Christ’s life set on gold backgrounds. During this period, superlative psalters were produced in the East Anglian monasteries of Norfolk and Suffolk. At the same time, German miniaturists, who had long drawn upon Byzantine sources, began to imitate French models.
The late fourteenth and early fifteenth centuries saw dramatic change in illumination when grisaille (monochromatic painting in shades of gray) came in to vogue. Gold backgrounds were used extensively, and landscapes that represented actual topographies were introduced. Of this period, the fully colored Très Riches Heures, commissioned by Jean, Duc de Berry in 1413 has been called the “king” of illuminated manuscripts.
In 1455, the introduction of printing from moveable type precluded the need for hand copying, and within a generation nearly all books were produced by printing presses. Not only was the printing press less time- and cost-intensive than hand copying, it facilitated wide dissemination of books that was previously impossible. During the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, illuminations were added to printed books; however, despite general use of mechanical printing, Paris remained a center of hand-copied religious texts until the mid-1500s, and Spanish antiphonals were hand written by monks into the eighteenth century.
During the late 1780s, poet and visionary William Blake turned to the illuminated manuscript as a way of combining literary and visual arts into a form that would, in Blake’s words, cleanse the “door of perception” and awake man from the “sleep of reason.” His illuminated books departed radically from eighteenth century printing norms and customary presentations of poetic and philosophical writings.
John Ruskin, nineteenth century author, critic, and Gothic Revival champion, believed that illuminated books would place artistic production in artists’ rather than factory owners’ hands. A reaction to the dawning Age of Industry, Ruskin’s awareness of a book’s physical appearance and his devotion to individual artistic expression were taken up by Arts and Crafts Movement founder William Morris, who established the Kelmscott Press and produced books in illuminated manuscript style. Described as one of the greatest British books ever made, the Kelmscott edition of Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales was highlighted by Morris-designed initials, intricate borders, and eighty-seven illustrations by second-wave Pre-Raphaelite painter Edward Bourne-Jones. Taking four years to complete, 425 copies were printed on vellum in white pigskin and bound with silver clasps.
The sturdiness of old vellum has resulted in thousands of surviving illuminated manuscripts. While the best complete and fragmentary volumes are held in museum, cathedral, and private collections, illuminated leaves from Bibles and other religious texts are available to collectors at affordable prices, some under $200. Convincing reproductions are numerous, so an essential caveat is to purchase only from established specialist dealers.
By Adele Kenny
Reprinted with the kind permission of Antiques & Auction News, July 2006
and The Paper and Advertising Collector, February 2007
Copyright © 2006 & 2007. All rights reserved.
From the seventh through the thirteenth centuries, nearly every Bible, Book of the Hours, Psalter, Breviary, Missal, and hagiographic work was laboriously hand-copied by a European monk in a room called and scriptorium. Set up in monastery and cathedral cloisters, scriptoria were partitioned into small cubicles in which monks spoke the words aloud as they copied them, a process closely associated with prayer and a form of meditation.
Today, these books are known as illuminated manuscripts because of their rich painted decoration. The term “illuminated” derived from the Latin illuminare, meaning “to adorn” and related to oratory or prose style. They are also called eluminures or miniatures, with the latter term taken not from size but from the Latin minum, a red pigment used in paint. These illustrations generally fall into three classifications: (1) rubrics or letters (elaborately decorated with vines, tendrils, or foliate or geometric forms), historical initials containing narrative images, and inhabited initials containing human or animal forms; (2) borders or marginal decoration (marginalia); and (3) miniatures or small pictures incorporated into the text or spread across whole or partial pages.
Most illuminated manuscripts were written on vellum, a very fine and durable grade of sheep, goat, or calfskin. The material was costly and required a repeated curing process of soaking in clear water, immersing in a lime solution, scraping hairs, and sun-drying until the vellum was completely clean and flexible enough for use.
The monks made pens from natural goose, crow, or turkey quills and, later, iron. Black ink (a mixture of lampblack and a fixing agent such as water or oil) was used most often, but an encaustic black (an acidic iron gall mixture) that etched indelibly into the vellum was also used. Colored inks were usually red or blue (although other colors were available and were used in the most lavish presentations), and accents were added in gold leaf or gold ink.
Because literacy in Europe was in its infancy, the relationship between script and art was integral to the illuminated manuscripts’ visuality, and aesthetic conceptions required that the calligraphy be carried out with painstaking care to ensure that harmony of size and shape was achieved. One monk could toil for years on a single Bible chapter. Created as acts of religious devotion, the manuscripts were not merely illustrated reading materials and, for the copyist monks, the technique of illumination was less about creating art than it was about releasing the light of truth from the text. The glosses, commentary, border designs, and other ornamentation were added to reveal the inner qualities of the text so the text and decoration were united in the truth of God’s word.
As early as the fifth century, miniaturist schools were formed in Syrian and Mesopotamian monasteries, drawing inspiration from Greek art and Oriental traditions. The Syriac Evangeliary (by the monk Rubula in Mesopotamia, c. 586) is a noteworthy work of this school. The most celebrated, world-renowned illuminated manuscript was produced between the seventh and ninth centuries in Ireland. Known as the Book of Kells, it is a large format codex of the Latin gospels, housed in Dublin’s Trinity College.
The eighth and ninth century Iconoclastic Controversy in the Byzantine Church resulted in the mutilation and destruction of many illuminated manuscripts. In Europe, manuscripts of this period were ornamented with initial letters, simple in early examples and later enhanced by foliage, animals, and small figures. During the ninth and tenth centuries, Charlemagne was responsible for forming schools of miniature painting in his empire’s major monasteries, and Carolingian illuminations generally display Irish and Anglo-Saxon influences, along with elements of ancient and Oriental art.
By the beginning of the eleventh century, illuminated manuscripts were characterized by the development of large initials and variously sized marginalia. Human figures began to assume increasing importance. Naturalism and anachronism (particularly in clothing styles) appeared in many illuminations of this period.
Thirteenth century illumination, like calligraphy, was no longer restricted to European monastic production as lay illuminators began to establish studios throughout Europe. At the same time, text became almost subordinate to painting as in the case of “picture Bibles” comprised of series of miniatures, and “sermon Bibles” that were pictorial summaries of scripture verses. The moralisée was a form of pictorial Bible in which text relating to Biblical events and corresponding “moralizations” were copied in two columns with eight illuminations per page. Gothic ornamentation (including such devices as roses, trefoils, quatrefoils, gables, and pinnacles) provided design elements for illuminations of this period and were often set on gold backgrounds.
During the early fourteenth century, a new school of border illumination inspired by nature began to take form, and traces of Italian architectural influence of a mixed Gothic disposition were expressed in such manuscripts as the Book of Miracles of Our Lady. English illuminators produced such manuscripts as Queen Mary’s Psalter which belonged to Mary Tudor and contains more than two hundred Old Testament scenes bordered by foliage as well as by scenes of Christ’s life set on gold backgrounds. During this period, superlative psalters were produced in the East Anglian monasteries of Norfolk and Suffolk. At the same time, German miniaturists, who had long drawn upon Byzantine sources, began to imitate French models.
The late fourteenth and early fifteenth centuries saw dramatic change in illumination when grisaille (monochromatic painting in shades of gray) came in to vogue. Gold backgrounds were used extensively, and landscapes that represented actual topographies were introduced. Of this period, the fully colored Très Riches Heures, commissioned by Jean, Duc de Berry in 1413 has been called the “king” of illuminated manuscripts.
In 1455, the introduction of printing from moveable type precluded the need for hand copying, and within a generation nearly all books were produced by printing presses. Not only was the printing press less time- and cost-intensive than hand copying, it facilitated wide dissemination of books that was previously impossible. During the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, illuminations were added to printed books; however, despite general use of mechanical printing, Paris remained a center of hand-copied religious texts until the mid-1500s, and Spanish antiphonals were hand written by monks into the eighteenth century.
During the late 1780s, poet and visionary William Blake turned to the illuminated manuscript as a way of combining literary and visual arts into a form that would, in Blake’s words, cleanse the “door of perception” and awake man from the “sleep of reason.” His illuminated books departed radically from eighteenth century printing norms and customary presentations of poetic and philosophical writings.
John Ruskin, nineteenth century author, critic, and Gothic Revival champion, believed that illuminated books would place artistic production in artists’ rather than factory owners’ hands. A reaction to the dawning Age of Industry, Ruskin’s awareness of a book’s physical appearance and his devotion to individual artistic expression were taken up by Arts and Crafts Movement founder William Morris, who established the Kelmscott Press and produced books in illuminated manuscript style. Described as one of the greatest British books ever made, the Kelmscott edition of Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales was highlighted by Morris-designed initials, intricate borders, and eighty-seven illustrations by second-wave Pre-Raphaelite painter Edward Bourne-Jones. Taking four years to complete, 425 copies were printed on vellum in white pigskin and bound with silver clasps.
The sturdiness of old vellum has resulted in thousands of surviving illuminated manuscripts. While the best complete and fragmentary volumes are held in museum, cathedral, and private collections, illuminated leaves from Bibles and other religious texts are available to collectors at affordable prices, some under $200. Convincing reproductions are numerous, so an essential caveat is to purchase only from established specialist dealers.
