Colour-box, palette, pigments, gold leaf and media of various kinds.
Sponge and pumice-stone for erasures.
| Paintings of scribes. |
Paintings of scribes.Miniatures representing a scribe writing a manuscript are the commonest of all subjects in several classes of illuminated manuscripts. For example the first capital of Saint Jerome's Prologue in the historiated Anglo-Norman Vulgates almost always has a very minute painting of a monastic scribe[[285]], seated, writing on a sloping desk, with his pen in one hand and his penknife in the other[[286]].
| The scribes' processes. |
The scribes' processes.In one respect such scenes are always treated in a conventional way; that is, the scribe is represented writing in a complete and bound book, whereas both the writing of the text and the illuminations were done on loose sheets of vellum, which could be conveniently pinned down flat on the desk or drawing-board.
The processes employed in the execution of an illuminated manuscript of the fourteenth or fifteenth century were the following;
First, if the text were to be in one column, four lines were ruled marking the boundaries of the patch of text and the margin. These four lines usually cross at the angles and are carried to the extreme edge of the vellum[[287]].
| Ruled lines. |
Ruled lines.Next, the scribe, with a pair of dividers or compasses, pricked out at even distances the number of lines which were to be ruled to serve as a guide in writing the text. These pricked holes were, as a rule, set at the extreme edge of the vellum, and were intended to be cut off by the binder, but in many manuscripts they still remain. The scribe then filled the space within the first four marginal lines with parallel ruled lines at the intervals indicated by the pricks at the edge.