![]() ![]() The book is decorated with large pen-flourished initials to signal text divisions. The initials are eight lines in height, with party-coloured bars in red and blue. The example below is from an early thirteenth-century French book. In the example below, the capital 'L' on the left has been decorated with the design of a human face.ĭetail from the Wollaton Antiphonal, MS 250, f. It could be elaborated with pen-work flourishes, usually in red or blue ink. Sometimes an initial would be made just a little larger than other letters, perhaps two-lines, rather than one, in height. Sometimes this was done at a very basic level through rubrication – picking out initials in red ink. One of the simplest ways to decorate a manuscript book was to incorporate a design into the presentation of initials. Applying gold leaf was a delicate and highly skilled process. If a design included gold leaf, this had to be applied before coloured pigments or inks. Other semi-precious stones were sometimes used in the decorating of fine illuminated manuscripts, including lapis lazuli, which was ground to make ultramarine. A range of coloured paints (white and different shades of blue, red, green and yellow) made from naturally available pigments were available. Illuminations are illustrations which are made using gold or silver leaf or powder to reflect light and add a luminous, bejewelled quality to the design. The use of initials, illustrations and borders could announce text divisions, or indicate important sections of a work, or could be designed to help the reader engage with the contents of text.Īn illuminated manuscript is the most expensive and ornate type of decorated manuscript. However, decoration was also intended to aid literacy by offering visual as well as textual contents, to help the reader find his or her way around the book, or to aid the interpretation of a text. It might also function as a statement of the importance of the person or institution that had commissioned or owned the book. It was used to enhance the appearance of the book, and its value. When manuscripts were decorated to any degree the process and scheme of this decoration was usually planned before the text was copied.ĭecoration in medieval manuscripts performed a number of functions. Keene, ed, Toward a Global Middle Ages: Encountering the World through Illuminated Manuscripts, J.Most manuscripts either show simple decorative schemes or are plain and unadorned. This is a nuanced and balanced study of the interconnectedness of reading, writing and illustrating in the world before printing. There is also a two-page colour map of the world indicating the centres of book production throughout the medieval world with pointers to works discussed in the text. The book includes a handy time table of extra-European book productions from 100BC to 1800. Ethiopian illuminated texts Persian painted books Buddhist manuscripts from Southeast and Central Asia (shown here, a 15th-century leaf, The Appearance of Shakyamuni (the Buddha) after His Death, from a manuscript of the Majma al-Tavarikh (Compendium of Chronicles), by Hafiz- i Abru, Herat, Afghanistan) Mayan codices and codex-style vessels the interaction of European prints and Armenian manuscripts and representations of Buddha in palm-leaf books, are among the many subjects covered in these essays. Materials from Africa, Asia, Australasia and the Americas are gathered to illustrate what is becoming known to academics as the Global Middle Ages. This book aims to challenge that stereotype by setting out in essays and case studies a broader understanding of illuminated manuscripts. When we think of illuminated manuscripts we naturally tend to think of decorated codices, mainly on religious-although occasionally on secular-topics, made in medieval Europe now carefully preserved in museums or libraries, in whole or in part.
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