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

by J. H. Middleton

Scheme of colour.With regard to the arrangement of these pictures, each is surrounded by a simple frame formed of bands of blue and red; in most cases the miniatures reach across the whole width of the page. The colouring is heavy, painted in opaque tempera pigments with an undue preponderance of minium or red lead. White lead, yellow, brown and red ochres are largely used, together with a variety of vegetable colours and the purple-red of the kermes beetle (coccus), but no gold is used, a bright yellow ochre being employed as a substitute[^[22]].

The costumes are partly ancient Greek and partly of later Roman fashion. A nimbus encircles each deity's head, and different colours are used to distinguish them. The nimbus of Zeus is purple, that of Venus is green; those of the other gods are mostly blue. To a large extent the backgrounds of the pictures are not painted, but the creamy white of the vellum is left exposed[^[23]].

The Vatican Virgil.

The Vatican Virgil.The Virgil of the Vatican; next in importance to the Ambrosian Iliad, among the existing examples of classical illuminated manuscripts, comes the manuscript of Virgil's poems (Vat. No. 3225) which is supposed to have been written in the third or more probably the fourth century A.D. The text is written in large handsome capitals, well formed except that all the cross lines are too short, T, for example being written thus

.

The whole manuscript, but especially the Aeneid, is decorated with pictures, fifty in all, each framed by a simple border of coloured bands. The style of these miniatures is very different and artistically very inferior to that of the Ambrosian Iliad.

Miniatures of the 5th century.

Miniatures of the 5th century.The whole of the designs, in composition and drawing and in the costumes of the figures, are those of the fourth century. The details are coarse, the attitudes devoid of spirit, and the figures clumsy. The backgrounds are painted in and the colouring is dull in tone and heavy in texture, put in with a considerable body of pigment (impasto). Gold, not in leaf but as a fluid pigment, is largely used for high lights on trees, mountains, roofs of buildings, and for the folds of drapery, especially where the stuff is red or purple. The male figures have flesh of a reddish-brown tint like many of the Pompeian wall paintings; they wear short tunics with cloaks thrown over the shoulders. Other figures wear a long dalmatica or tunic, ornamented with two vertical purple stripes, closely resembling the tunics which have recently been found in such abundance in the late Roman tombs of the Fayoum in Upper Egypt.

Period of decadence.