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

by J. H. Middleton

Perfect beauty.

Perfect beauty.No words can adequately express the refined and poetical beauty of these miniatures of Apocalyptic scenes, glowing with the utmost splendour of burnished gold, ultramarine and other brilliant pigments. The whole figures of the angels, their beautiful serene faces, their exquisitely pencilled wings with feathers of bright colours, the simple dignified folds of their drapery, all are executed with the most wonderful certainty of touch and the highest possible sense of romantic beauty.

The accessories are hardly less beautiful; the Gothic arches and pinnacles of the New Jerusalem, the vine plants and other trees and flowers, designed with a perfect balance between decorative conventionalism and realistic truth, and last of all the sumptuous backgrounds covered with delicate diapers or scroll-work in gold and blue and crimson, all unite the whole composition into one perfect harmony, like a mosaic of gleaming gems, fixed in a matrix of pure, shining gold.

Machine-made art.

Machine-made art.Nothing perhaps could better exemplify the gulf that separates the artistic productions of this feverish, steam-driven nineteenth century from the serene glories of the art of bygone days than a comparison of such a book as the Trinity Apocalypse with that masterpiece of commercial art called "the Victoria Psalter," which, printed in a steam-press on machine-made paper, illuminated by chromolithography, and bound in a machine-embossed leather cover, produces a total effect which cannot adequately be described in polite language[^[115]].

English Monasteries.

English Monasteries.The later English manuscripts. In the fourteenth century a more distinctly English style of illumination began to branch off from the Anglo-Norman style. Something like separate schools of painting gradually grew up in the great Benedictine Monasteries, such as those at St Albans, Norwich, Glastonbury and Bury Saint Edmunds.

The type of face represented in English miniatures from about the middle of the fourteenth century onwards is rather different from the French type with its long oval face and pointed nose[^[116]]. In English manuscripts the faces are rounder and plumper, and the backgrounds are very frequently formed by gold scroll-work over a peculiar pink, made by a mixture of red lead with a large proportion of white.

The Black Death.

The Black Death.On the whole the style of figure painting in English manuscripts deteriorated very distinctly after the ravages caused by the Black Death in the middle of the fourteenth century; that is to say the average of excellence became lower; and, especially in the fifteenth century, a good deal of very coarse and inferior manuscript illumination was produced. On the other hand there were some illuminators in England whose work is not surpassed by that of any contemporary French or Flemish artist.