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

by J. H. Middleton

Canute a patron of art. Feeble colouring.

Canute a patron of art.To return to the Anglo-Saxon school of manuscripts in the eleventh century, it should be observed that the Danish King Canute, unlike his destructive predecessors, did all that he could to encourage literature and art in England. With a view to fostering the production of fine illuminated manuscripts he introduced into this country, and especially into the royal and monastic libraries of Winchester, a large number of Roman manuscripts with the usual illuminations of the debased classic type. This, no doubt, helped to encourage the production of miniatures in outline such as those in the Utrecht Psalter[^[92]]. Feeble colouring.Another variety of Anglo-Saxon manuscript illumination, executed during the first half of the eleventh century, consists first of all of a pen drawing in brown outline; to which subsequently the artist added with a brush narrow bands of blue or red laid on in a thin wash as a sort of edging to the brown outlines, apparently with the object of giving roundness to the drawing[^[93]].

This class of illumination is, however, very inferior in beauty and decorative splendour to the finest works of the monks of Winchester and Glastonbury, in which solid colour in great variety of tint is used, as, for example in the above-mentioned Benedictional of Aethelwold and the Pontifical of Saint Dunstan.

The Anglo-Norman school.

The Anglo-Norman school.The Norman conquest of England in 1066 soon put an end to the Anglo-Saxon school of illumination, with its weak imitations of the debased classical style of Italy. In place of this the magnificent Anglo-Norman schools of miniature painting were developed on both sides of the British Channel. England and Normandy became one country, and as long as this union lasted manuscripts of precisely similar character were produced both in Normandy and in England, as is described in the following Chapter.

CHAPTER VIII.

The Anglo-Norman School of Manuscripts.

The twelfth century in England and Northern France was a period of rapid artistic development in almost all branches of the arts, from a miniature illumination to a great Cathedral or Abbey church.

The Norman invasion. Robert of Gloucester.

The Norman invasion.With regard, however, to the art of illuminated manuscripts and other branches of art in England it should be observed that though the conquered English and the Norman conquerors with remarkable rapidity were amalgamated with great solidarity into one united people[^[94]], yet for a long period after the Conquest it was distinctly the Norman element that took the lead in all matters of art and literature. The Bishops, Abbots and Priors of the great English ecclesiastical foundations were for a long period wholly or in the main men of the Norman race, and thus (intellectually) the native English took a lower place, and did far less to advance the arts of England than did the Normans who formed the upper and more cultivated class. Robert of Gloucester.As Robert of Gloucester the Benedictine monkish Chronicler of the thirteenth century says,