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

by J. H. Middleton

Carolingian Gospels.As was the case with the earlier Byzantine manuscripts, the most magnificent books produced in the Carolingian period were this kind of Evangeliaria or Books of the Gospels. Though differing in the details of their ornamentation, these later Gospels are decorated with the same set of miniature subjects that occur in the Byzantine Gospels. The library of Paris possesses a fine typical example of this (Bibl. Nat. Nouv. Acq. Lat. 1993), a richly decorated and signed Evangeliarium, Gospels of Godesscalc.which was written for Charles the Great in 781 by the scribe and illuminator Godesscalc. Every page is sumptuously ornamented with large initials and a border in brilliant burnished gold, and silver, and bright colours; and there are also six full-page miniatures, the first four representing the four Evangelists enthroned in the usual way. The fifth has a painting of Christ in Majesty with one hand holding a book, the other raised in blessing; see fig. [12]. The sixth miniature represents the Fountain of Life. In all these paintings the backgrounds are very rich and decorative, with a greater variety and more fancifully designed ornament than is to be found in Byzantine manuscripts of a similar class, owing, of course, to the introduction of the many different elements of design which were combined with great taste and skill by the Carolingian illuminators.

Oriental influence.

Oriental influence.In this and many other manuscripts of the same class a very distinct Semitic or Persian strain of influence can be traced in much of the rich conventional ornament. Very beautiful and highly decorative forms and patterns were derived from Oriental sources[^[49]], owing to the active import into France and Germany of fine Persian carpets and textile stuffs from Moslem looms in Syria, Sicily (especially Palermo) and from other parts of the Arab world; all these textiles were designed with consummate taste and skill both in colour and drawing.

Sicilian silk cope.

Sicilian silk cope.Fig. [13] shows a fine specimen of woven silk from the Arab looms of Syria. It was used as an Imperial cope or mantle by various German Emperors; in the centre is a palm-tree, and on each side a lion devouring a camel, treated in a very decorative and masterly manner. The form of the conventional foliage on the lions' bodies is imitated in many manuscript illuminations, as, for example, in the ornaments of the initial B shown in fig. [11], page [64].

Fig. 13. A cope made of silk from the loom of an Oriental weaver.

Splendour of MSS.

Splendour of MSS.One important characteristic of the Carolingian manuscripts is their extreme splendour. The freely used burnished gold is often made more magnificent by the contrast of no less brilliant silver. Purple-stained vellum was largely used, and all the pigments are of the most gorgeous hues that great technical skill could produce. And yet in spite of all this magnificence of shining metals and bright colours the effect is never harsh or gaudy, owing to the taste and judgment shown by the illuminators in the way they broke up their colours, avoiding large unrelieved masses, and in the arrangement of the colours so as to give a general effect of harmony in spite of the great chromatic force of the separate parts.

Technical methods.