A Primer of the Art of Illumination for the Use of Beginners / With a rudimentary treatise on the art, practical directions for its exercise, and examples taken from illuminated mss.

by F. Delamotte

It is perhaps hardly necessary to add that nearly all the specimens will be found to have been taken from books, for the simple reason that by far the larger proportion of all mediæval illumination was bestowed upon them: of these it is not surprising to find Ecclesiastical works coming in for the largest share of attention. The service books in use in mediæval days,[2] in churches and cathedrals, were numerous; and being, as to a large part of their contents, accompanied by the old musical notation, executed in a large bold type, were necessarily of considerable size; indeed, as a general rule, about that of our modern music paper, that is, rather larger than the prayer books generally in use in our cathedrals in these days. Of these service books some of the principal were—the Missal or Mass book, the Lectionary, which contained the lessons for each day, the Psalter, the Hymnarium or book of hymns, the Antiphonarium or anthem book: these were in constant daily use, and there were besides a number of other books containing offices, benedictions, &c. for special occasions. The book of private devotion, in use among the laity, was called the book of Hours, as it contained prayers, psalms, &c. for all the canonical hours during the day; and for the clergy and religious, there was the Breviary as well. The above list will convey but a meagre notion of the number and variety of the books in use in the middle ages, in connexion with the service of the church. It may be added, by the way, that the libraries of cathedrals, monasteries, and religious houses were well furnished with copies of the Gospels, and of the other books composing the sacred volume; of which, occasionally, also copies found their way into the comparatively small collections of great men. From the above sketch, however, it may be gathered, what a field was afforded, by this variety of books, for the exercise of the art under consideration. The large vellum sheets on which the various offices were to be inscribed must have been a source of almost revelry to the imaginations of such members of the monastic institution, always in those days attached to a cathedral, as were the fortunate possessors of artistic taste; and it is probable that, to the monastic body, the work of illumination was always generally, and through all the earlier centuries exclusively, confided. It was not until it began to assume a place as a recognized art, in all probability, that regular professors and practisers of it sprung up outside the walls of the monastery;[3] but however and by whomsoever practised, there was always plenty to be done—besides the regular business of replacing, perpetuating, and increasing the contents of the cathedral or monastic library—there were always great and wealthy men, desirous of possessing for themselves, or of presenting to their friends or patrons, such books as a copy of the Gospels, or, more generally, a book of Hours; and the richness and magnificence of the work executed, would bear a sort of exact proportion to the liberality of the customer, or the greatness of the destined owner. It was in this way that such splendid works came into existence, as the Gospels made for Macbrid Mac Dernan, already mentioned; the Lectionary presented by Lord Lovell to the church of Salisbury; the celebrated Hours of Anne of Brittany, generally understood to have been presented to her by Louis XII; those of S. Louis, of Henry VII., of the Duke of Anjou, of Queen Mary; the great Hours of the Duke of Berri; the golden Gospels; the Bibles written for Charlemagne, for Charles the Bald; and a host of other magnificent works which, at this day, supply those specimens of the art which modern illuminators take for their models, and occupy, in relation to it, the same place as the old masters’ pictures to painting, and the temples of Greece and Rome, and the cathedrals of England and France, to architecture.

But the art of illumination, though principally employed on works connected with the services of the church, or with private devotion, was far from being exclusively so occupied. Chronicles and histories, and descriptions and travels, as well as poems and other compositions, and the classics, all received more or less ornamentation, according to the same rule of proportion already laid down for service books, and books of hours. Dedications were common; and what we should now call a presentation copy, was frequently adorned with magnificent illustration, in honour of the great man under whose auspices the work issued, and of whom it was not unusual to introduce a portrait into the title or first page, representing him ‘as he appeared’ receiving the presentation copy from the author. Of this kind are the Recollation of the Chronicles of England written for Edward the IV., 1460; Capgrave’s Commentary on Genesis, dedicated to Humphrey Duke of Gloucester, 1438; Old Mandeville’s Wonders of the World, 14th century; Lydgate’s poem, or rather translation of the Pelerinage de l’Homme, dedicated to the great Earl of Warwick, 1430; and many others. Of the classics many beautiful editions have come down to us, both in MS. and printed, illuminated with exquisite taste—the classic element being very naturally introduced more liberally here than into the books of religion, or even of local interest. The 15th century is rich in such works; and Italy, as might be supposed, produces the best. The King’s Library, at the British Museum, displays more, in proportion, of these specimens of the art than of any other; and many of them will repay careful study for the sake of their extreme chasteness, the excellence of their taste, and the comprehensiveness of their general arrangement.

It may be readily conjectured that books thus produced were exceedingly valuable; indeed, every one is aware what a serious and palpable effect the price of books, before the introduction and development of the art of printing, exercised on the spread of literature; and though it was not every copy of every work that was made the subject of those brilliant appliances of red, and blue, and gold, which glitter on the leaves open beneath the glass cases at the Museum, yet even ordinary and less pretentious works received some sort of simple ornamentation, principally in the shape of giving the initial letters of chapters or paragraphs in colour, filling up the vacant spaces at the end of either with a simple outline flourish, somewhat resembling the earlier Greek borders, introducing red lines between the written ones, and in general—to use a very familiar phrase—‘smartening up’ the appearance of the work. When, however, the artist and the skilled workman were called in to exert their energies, and exercise their ingenuity on the more magnificent, both of course had to be remunerated, in proportion to the prominence of their part in the production of the work, and the value of their labour naturally entered largely as an almost principal item into the heavy prices paid for such books: it may be added, however, that the cost of binding formed generally an almost equally extravagant item in the calculation, to understand which, it will merely be necessary to look into one or two of the cases, in the rooms we have referred to, specially devoted to specimens of magnificent binding. Under these circumstances the value of illuminated books need be no longer a wonder. We select, however, one instance by way of closing this digression. The same Duke Humphrey, of whom mention has already been made, presented in the year 1440, to the University of Oxford, a collection of some 600 volumes, among which there were 120 which were valued alone at 1,000l., between 1,800l. and 1,900l. of our present money.[4] They were the most splendid and costly copies that could be procured, finely written on vellum, and elegantly embellished with miniatures and illuminations. The narrator feelingly deplores, by the way, the utter destruction or removal of all this magnificent donation, with the single exception of a copy of a Valerius Maximus, by the pious visitors of the University, in the reign of Edward VI., whose zeal was only equalled by their ignorance, or perhaps by their avarice; because these books, being highly ornamented, looked like missals. It will be scarcely necessary to remind the reader that the treasures of the art of illumination in this country suffered—besides the weeding out of the Reformation—a second grand onslaught in the succeeding century, when the troopers of the Commonwealth tore up and scattered to the winds the beautiful contents of many a nobleman’s and private gentleman’s library, from the precisely similar reason that they were full of popish pictures. The first raid was on the ecclesiastical, the second on the lay libraries; and that so many treasures of art escaped, is probably owing to the circumstance, that the more intelligent and provident, both of churchmen and laymen—and let it be added those amongst both who appreciated their books as highly, or more so, than their plate—concealed them in cellars and out of the way places, before the storm fell on them. On the whole, it would seem as though England has suffered in this matter more than any other country, from the indiscriminating fury of bigotted fanatics.

Another class of subjects of the art to which allusion has already been made, consists of official documents, such as charters, grants, diplomas, &c., the dignity of which it appears to have been not unusual to enhance by the aid of ornamentation. As far as can be gathered, however, the custom seems to have obtained more in Italy than in this country; and it is only mentioned here, partly as exhibiting a distinct department of the art, and partly because one of the most striking specimens, to which reference will be made, is a grant by a Duke of Milan to his wife, of lands in the territories of Novara Pavia and Milan, (1494,) and which for beauty of conception, excellence of execution, and above all chasteness of tone, has not its equal among all the specimens adduced. Such a grant is a sort of counterpart to our marriage settlement; but this may be the best place to warn beginners not to confound law engrossing with illumination. The former is—or was, and might again become—a beautiful art of itself; some magnificent specimens of it exist—the charter of the law society for one—but the arts are distinct and the characters different. The only work in which the two frequently meet in these days, and present in that combination a very fair reproduction, by the way, of these very charters and diplomas of which we are now treating, is the engrossment of those singularly worded documents in which a public body is wont to inform an exalted personage, that they “beg to approach her with the profoundest, &c., &c., &c.,” in short, of an address.

There yet remains to mention another department of the art, which during the last few years has become a very favourite and somewhat popular vehicle for its revival and development. This is what is generally known as “scroll work,” under which head, though the title is strictly applicable to but one sort, it is proposed to include, for convenience’ sake, all sorts of writing on, or attached to walls. The growth of this department of the art may be easily traced in connexion with the growth of intelligence and learning generally. In days when few besides ecclesiastics could read, it was a very obvious mode of instruction—akin to what goes on now in the nursery and the infant school—to cover interior walls, and especially those of churches, with pictures, illustrating, either by actual historical events or in allegory, those moral and religious lessons which it was desired to inculcate; and many such fresco paintings, as they are curiously enough called, have recently come to light from under the coats of whitewash with which modern economy had carefully covered them up—and though this method of instruction, through the medium of wall painting, never quite died out, and has been the subject of a noble resuscitation in these days, yet it was again obviously natural that, as people more generally acquired the power of reading, and as, simultaneously, a feeling against any sort of figures inside churches—always except the lion and unicorn of the Caroline days—sprung up, those lessons which had hitherto been pictorially should now be directly inculcated; in short, that the picture book should be laid aside for the grammar. There came to help a canon, ordering the setting up of the Lord’s Prayer, Creed, and Ten Commandments, and thus by degrees texts of scripture came to appear along the string courses, following the spring of the arches, or adorning the side walls, &c. Modern architects have availed themselves largely of this custom; and in many modern churches, not only are texts introduced as features in the architecture, but also in quaintly-devised scrolls along the walls, whilst the Creed, &c. have been made the vehicle of elaborate ornamentation at the east end.

That most of these instructive adornments of the walls of churches, schools, &c. are painted on the wall itself, and so in a manner are taken out of the category of the art which is the peculiar subject of this work, by no means deprives them of a place in it altogether, for they are all as truly specimens and products of the art as what is executed on vellum or cardboard, only bearing to the latter about the same relation as fresco painting does to the canvas picture.

At Christmas time particularly, as well as on some other festive occasions, it is not unusual to see an almost indefinite multiplication of this scroll work executed on paper or cardboard, and sometimes in embroidery, affixed temporarily to the walls. Of these temporary decorations, which generally exhibit strong internal evidence of their being the work of beginners, it would be illnatured to say more than that they are specimens rather of hearty zeal than of good taste, and that a rudimentary acquaintance, even, with mediæval examples, might have saved them from inflicting pain on critical eyes, whilst they would have been equally the admiration of the uninitiated.

A remarkable instance of this department of the art, and one not unworthy of imitation, is to be found mentioned in the ‘Expenses of Louis XI,’ in which a sum is entered as paid to one ‘Bourdichon, painter and illuminator,’ for having executed in ‘Azure fifty large scrolls,’ which the king had caused to be set up in several places in Plessis du Parc, and on which was written, Misericordias Domini in æternum Cantabo, (I will sing the mercies of the Lord for ever;) and ‘for having painted and pourtrayed in gold and Azure,—and other colours, three angels, three feet high or thereabouts, each of which holds one of these scrolls in his hand, and appears to be writing the aforesaid Misericordia.’