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

by J. H. Middleton

Wall-paintings at Westminster.

Wall-paintings at Westminster.A magnificent series of wall-paintings, with subjects from sacred and profane history and from the Apocryphal books of the Old Testament, were executed by various artists, both monks and laymen, on the walls of the chief rooms in the new Palace of Westminster. In style these paintings were very like the miniatures in an illuminated manuscript of the time; they were simply designed, flat in treatment, and executed with the most minute and delicate detail. Great richness of effect was produced by the use of wooden stamps with which delicate diapers and other patterns were stamped over the backgrounds of the pictures on the thin coat of gesso which covered the stone wall. These minutely executed reliefs were then thickly gilt, forming rich gold backgrounds, such as are so commonly used in the manuscripts of the Anglo-Norman school; see fig. [23], p. [130].

Paintings copied from MSS.

Paintings copied from MSS.The close connection between these magnificent wall paintings and the illuminated miniatures in manuscripts is borne witness to by an interesting record that, in the year 1250, the King ordered Richard de Sanford, Master of the Knights Templars, to lend an illuminated manuscript in French of "The Gestes of Antioch and the History of the Crusades" to the painter Edward of Westminster, so that he might copy the miniatures, using the designs to paint the walls of "the Queen's low room in the new Palace of Westminster" with a series of historical pictures. From these paintings of "the Gestes of Antioch" the Queen's room was thenceforth known as "the Antioch chamber[^[101]]".

The Painted Chamber.

The Painted Chamber.The largest of the halls in the Westminster Palace, decorated with a marvellous series of exquisitely finished paintings, was known as "the Painted Chamber" par excellence from its great size and the immense number of pictures which covered its walls. The system of decoration adopted in the thirteenth century was not to paint large pictures in a large hall, but simply to multiply the number of small ones, keeping the figures as delicate in execution and small in scale as if the room had been of the most limited dimensions.

This had the effect of enormously adding to the apparent scale of the room, a great contrast to the method of decoration which was employed in later times of decadence, when large halls were dwarfed and rendered insignificant by covering the walls with figures of colossal size. The sixteenth century tapestry in the great hall at Hampton Court is a striking example of the way in which gigantic figures may destroy the scale of an interior.

Existing fragments.

Existing fragments.The great beauty and extreme minuteness of the work can be seen in some few damaged fragments, now in the British Museum, which were not completely destroyed when the Royal Palace of Westminster, the seat of the two Houses of Parliament, was burnt in 1834.

In the second half of the thirteenth century, during the reigns of Henry III. and Edward I., the painting of England was unrivalled by that of any other country[^[102]]. Even in Italy, Cimabue and his assistants were still labouring in the fetters of Byzantine conventionalism, and produced no works which for jewel-like beauty of colour and grace of form were quite equal to the paintings of England under Edward I.