Fig. 14. King Lothair enthroned; a miniature from a manuscript of about the year 845 A.D.
| Classical school of St Gall. |
Classical school of St Gall.In the ninth century the Benedictine monastery of St Gallen in Switzerland, which had formerly produced manuscripts of a purely Celtic type, now developed a very strange school of miniature art[[52]]. The pictures in these St Gallen manuscripts have figure subjects drawn in outline and then faintly coloured with transparent washes, very like the Anglo-Saxon (classical) style of illumination during the ninth and tenth centuries. These rather weak drawings, which have but little decorative value, show the influence of the Roman school of illuminators, who still mainly adhered to the old debased form of classical art, modified by some observation and even careful study of the actual life and movement which the painters saw around them. In this curious class of manuscripts, though the figure subjects are devoid of much vigour and artistic force, yet the decorative details of the initials and borders are extremely fine, full of invention and delicacy of detail. Fig. [15] shows a pen drawing from a St Gallen manuscript of the ninth century, the magnificent Psalterium aureum[[53]]; it represents David going forth to battle.
| Studies from life. |
Studies from life.With regard to studies from the life, either of men or animals, it should be remembered that an artist is always biased by tradition and association to a degree which is now very difficult to realise. Even when looking at the same object two painters of different race and education might receive very different impressions on their retina. Thus in the very interesting sketch-book of Villard de Honecourt, a French sculptor and architect of the thirteenth century, there are studies of men, lions and other animals, which he has noted as being from the life; and yet these drawings look to us like the purely imaginative conceptions of a heraldic draughtsman, in spite of the fact that Villard certainly represented them as faithfully as he was able, putting down on his vellum the subjective visual and mental impression that he had received[[54]].
Fig. 15. Illumination in pen outline, from a manuscript written in the ninth century at St Gallen. It represents David riding out against his enemies.
Figs. 16 and 17. Subject countries doing homage to the Emperor Otho II; from a manuscript of the Gospels.