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

by J. H. Middleton

The great Renaissance of art in Italy, which led to such magnificent results in the fourteenth to the sixteenth centuries, in its first beginnings lagged behind the artistic movement in the north, so that during the thirteenth century, when England, France and Germany had almost reached their climax of artistic growth, Italy had hardly begun to advance[^[173]].

MS. of Donizo.

MS. of Donizo.As an example of the degraded state of Italian art during the twelfth century I may mention a manuscript in the Vatican library (Vat. 4922)[^[174]] of a poem in honour of the Countess Matilda written by a monk of Canossa named Donizo, which has a number of miniature illustrations. These are of the lowest type, utterly feeble in the drawing of the human form and quite without any feeling for the folds of drapery; the figures are mere shapeless masses without any decorative beauty of colour to make up for the helpless ignorance of the draughtsman; see fig. [47].

Later on in the twelfth century, and during the first half of the thirteenth century, art in Italy was mainly a feeble reflection of the then degraded art of the Byzantines. This was partly due to the introduction into Italy of mosaic-workers from Constantinople, such as those who decorated the vault of the old Cathedral of Florence (now the Baptistery) with badly drawn but grandly decorative mosaics of the Day of Doom[^[175]].

Oderisi of Gubbio.

Oderisi of Gubbio.Little is known of the two illuminators of manuscripts who are immortalized by Dante (Purg. xi. 79-83). Oderisi of Gubbio, whom Dante calls the "Honour of the art that in Paris is called alluminare," is said to have been employed by Pope Boniface VIII. to illuminate manuscripts in Rome about the time of the great Jubilee of 1300, when Dante visited Rome as an envoy from Florence.

Franco of Bologna.

Franco of Bologna.Franco (Francesco) of Bologna is the other miniaturist mentioned by Dante as an artist of great merit; nothing is known of him or of his works. During the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries Bologna was one of the chief Italian centres for the production of manuscripts, partly on account of its being the seat of one of the oldest and most important Universities of Europe.

Fig. 47. Illumination from an Italian manuscript executed for the Countess Matilda in the twelfth century; this illustrates the extreme decadence of art in Italy before the thirteenth century.