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

by J. H. Middleton

English sculpture. William Torell.

English sculpture.In sculpture too England was no less pre-eminent; no continental works of the time are equal in combined dignity and beauty, both of the heads and of the drapery, to the bronze effigies of Henry III. and Queen Eleanor of Castile on the north side of Edward the Confessor's Chapel at Westminster. These noble examples of bronze sculpture William Torell.were the work of the goldsmith citizen of London William Torell, who executed them by the beautiful cire perdue process with the utmost technical skill[^[103]]; see page [232] on their gilding, which was executed by the old "mercury process."

The Fitz-Othos.

The Fitz-Othos.One of the chief English families of the thirteenth century, among whom the practice of various arts was hereditary, was named Otho or Fitz-Otho. Various members of this family were goldsmiths, manuscript illuminators, cutters of dies for coins and makers of official seals, as well as painters of mural decorations. The elaborate gold shrine of the Confessor, one of the most costly works of the Middle Ages, was made by the Otho family. The great royal seals of more than one king were their handiwork, and it should be observed that the seals of England, not only of the thirteenth century but almost throughout the mediaeval period, were far the most beautiful in the world, both for splendour and elaboration of design, and for exquisite minuteness of detail.

English needlework.

English needlework.Another minor branch of art, in which England during the thirteenth century far surpassed the rest of the world, was the art of embroidering delicate pictures in silk, especially for ecclesiastical vestments. The most famous embroidered vestments now preserved in various places in Italy are the handiwork of English embroiderers between the years 1250 and 1300, though their authorship is not as a rule recognized by their present possessors[^[104]]. The embroidered miniatures on these marvellous pieces of needlework resemble closely in style the illuminations in fine Anglo-Norman manuscripts of the thirteenth century, and in many cases have obviously been copied from manuscript miniatures.

Decay of English art.

Decay of English art.There is, in short, ample evidence to show that the Anglo-Norman art of the thirteenth century, in almost all branches, and more especially on English soil, had reached a higher pitch of perfection, aesthetic and technical, than had been then attained by any other country in the world. In the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries, owing largely to the Black Death and the protracted Wars of the Roses, the arts of England fell into the background, but it should not be forgotten that there was one period, from about 1260 to 1300 or 1320, when England occupied the foremost place in the artistic history of the world.

With regard to the Anglo-Norman manuscripts of the thirteenth and early part of the fourteenth century, the most remarkable class, both for beauty of execution and for the extraordinary number that were produced, consists of copies of the Vulgate, richly decorated with a large number of initial letters containing minute miniatures of figure subjects[^[105]].

MS. Bibles. Historiated Bibles.