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

by J. H. Middleton

Moreover, we find from the Guild records of Bruges that a certain number of Italian and Spanish scribes had taken up their residence in Bruges, and become members of the Guild of Saint John and Saint Luke, so that some manuscripts actually written in Flanders have a text which in style is Italian or Spanish.

Various other combinations of style occur not unfrequently. Many English manuscripts, for example, have miniature paintings which are French or Flemish in style, united with bold decorative borders of the most thoroughly English type.

MSS. in Grisaille.

MSS. in Grisaille.Manuscripts in Grisaille. In addition to the illuminations glowing with gold and colour of jewel-like brilliance, a peculiar class of miniature painting came into use in France during the fourteenth century and to some extent lasted till the close of the fifteenth. This was a system of almost monochromatic painting in delicate bluish grey tints with high lights touched in with white or fluid gold; this is called painting in grisaille or camaieu-gris[^[134]]; it frequently suggests the appearance of an onyx cameo or other delicate relief.

The earliest examples of grisaille, dating from the first half of the fourteenth century, sometimes have grounds of the brilliant gold, red and blue diapers, the figures themselves being painted in grisaille; but in its fully developed form no accessories of colour are used, and no burnished gold is introduced, only the mat, glossless fluid gold being used in some cases for the high lights.

Delicacy of Grisaille.

Delicacy of Grisaille.Some of the miniatures of this class are extremely beautiful for the delicacy of their modelling and the great refinement of the design, and are evidently the work of artists of the highest class. This system of illumination, being unaided by the splendours of shining gold and bright colours, requires a rather special delicacy of treatment, and was of course quite unsuited for the cheap and gaudy manuscripts which were mere commercial products. In some cases the grisaille pictures are clearly the work of a different hand from the rest of the book, and thus we sometimes see them combined with richly illuminated initials and ivy-leaf borders of the usual gorgeously coloured type.

In some late manuscripts the grisaille miniatures are distinctly intended to imitate actual bas-reliefs, and are painted with deceptive effects of roundness. This led to the introduction into manuscript ornaments of imitations of classical reliefs of gilt bronze or veined marbles, such as occur so often in the very sculpturesque paintings of the great Paduan, Andrea Mantegna.

Secular MSS.

Secular MSS.Till the early part of the fourteenth century the art of the illuminator had been mostly devoted to books on sacred subjects, but at this time manuscripts of Chronicles, accounts of travel, Romances and other secular works, often in the vulgar tongue, were largely written and illuminated in the most sumptuous way, especially for the royal personages of France and Burgundy.