Illuminated manuscripts in classical and mediaeval times, their art and their technique

by J. H. Middleton

Technical methods.

Technical methods.In some cases this foliage is painted with fluid gold; the high lights being touched in with white, and the shadows with a grisaille blue. Another beautiful style of decoration in manuscripts of this class has conventional flower forms painted in transparent lake with white lights over a sheet of burnished gold. The skilful use of gold both in the pigment form, and in leaf on a raised enamel-like ground, is specially characteristic of German and Dutch manuscripts of the fifteenth century. In some manuscripts very beautiful borders are executed in delicate scroll-work with fine lines and dots, all of burnished gold, the effect of which is very magnificent.

The borders and long marginal ornaments, which grow out of the large illuminated initials, are often diversified with figures of a naturalistic or grotesque type, devised with greater fancy and variety than the similar figures of the same sort which occur in so many French manuscripts.

MS. of the Emperor Wenzel.

MS. of the Emperor Wenzel.Fig. [41] shows a beautiful example of this, which dates from the last years of the fourteenth century, c. 1390. It is an ornament at the foot of one of the pages in a manuscript which was illuminated for the Emperor Wenzel of Bohemia. Two scenes, a prisoner in the stocks, and a man being bathed by two attendant girls, are placed in the centre of the grand sweeping lines of foliage. The backgrounds with their delicate scroll-work and diaper patterns are imitated from those in the fine French and Anglo-Norman manuscripts of the earlier part of the fourteenth century.

In some marginal illuminations, miniature figures of knights jousting are introduced charging through the scrolls of foliage; and Angels gracefully drawn are very frequently introduced into the elaborate borders, as is shown on fig. [40].

Grotesque figures.

Grotesque figures.Grotesque figures were great favourites with the Teutonic illuminators; devils and monkeys, pigmies fighting cranes, or strange monsters made up (like the Roman grylli) of several animals and birds united, are of frequent occurrence in German and Dutch illuminated manuscripts, more especially in Books of Hours, where such fancies were probably a relief from the gravity of the text both to the illuminator and to the owner of the book: see below, page [208].

Fig. 41. Marginal illumination of very beautiful and refined style from a manuscript executed for King Wenzel of Bohemia about the year 1390.