M. Lecoy de la Marche tells us that the first recorded name of an illuminator is that of a woman—Lala de Cizique, a Greek, who painted on ivory and on parchment in Rome during the first Christian century. But such a long period elapses between her time and that which we are about to study, that she can here occupy only the position of being referred to as an interesting isolated case.
The Byzantine is a very easy style to recognize, because of the inflexible stiffness of the figures, depending for any beauty largely upon the use of burnished gold, and the symmetrical folds of the draperies, which often show a sort of archaic grace. Byzantine art is not so much representation as suggestion and symbolism. There is a book which may still be consulted, called "A Byzantine Guide to Painting," which contains accurate recipes to be followed in painting pictures of each saint, the colours prescribed for the dress of the Virgin, and the grouping to be adopted in representing each of the standard Scriptural scenes; and it has hardly from the first occurred to any Byzantine artist to depart from these regulations. The heads and faces lack individuality, and are outlined and emphasized with hard, unsympathetic black lines; the colouring is sallow and the expression stolid. Any attempt at delineating emotion is grotesque, and grimacing. The beauty, for in spite of all these drawbacks there is great beauty, in Byzantine manuscripts, is, as has been indicated, a charm of colour and gleaming gold rather than of design. In the Boston Art Museum there is a fine example of a large single miniature of a Byzantine "Flight into Egypt," in which the gold background is of the highest perfection of surface, and is raised so as to appear like a plate of beaten gold.
There is no attempt to portray a scene as it might have occurred; the rule given in the Manual is followed, and the result is generally about the same. The background is usually either gold or blue, with very little effort at landscape. Trees are represented in flat values of green with little white ruffled edges and articulations. The sea is figured by a blue surface with a symmetrical white pattern of a wavy nature. A building is usually introduced about half as large as the people surrounding it. There is no attempt, either, at perspective.
The anatomy of the human form was not understood at all. Nearly all the figures in the art of this period are draped. Wherever it is necessary to represent the nude, a lank, disproportioned person with an indefinite number of ribs is the result, proving that the monastic art school did not include a life class.
Most of the best Byzantine examples date from the fifth to the seventh centuries. After that a decadence set in, and by the eleventh century the art had deteriorated to a mere mechanical process.
The Irish and Anglo-Saxon work are chiefly characterized in their early stages by the use of interlaced bands as a decorative motive. The Celtic goldsmiths were famous for their delicate work in filigree, made of threads of gold used in connection with enamelled grounds. In decorating their manuscripts, the artists were perhaps unconsciously influenced by this, and the result is a marvellous use of conventional form and vivid colours, while the human figure is hardly attempted at all, or, when introduced, is so conventionally treated, as to be only a sign instead of a representation.
Probably the earliest representation of a pen in the holder, although of a very primitive pattern, occurs in a miniature in the Gospels of Mac Durnam, where St. John is seen writing with a pen in one hand and a knife, for sharpening it, in the other. This picture is two centuries earlier than any other known representation of the use of the pen, the volume having been executed in the early part of the eighth century.
Two of the most famous Irish books are the Book of Kells, and the Durham Book. The Book of Kells is now in Trinity College, Dublin. It is also known as the Gospel of St. Columba. St. Columba came, as the Chronicle of Ethelwerd states, in the year 565: "five years afterwards Christ's servant Columba came from Scotia (Ireland) to Britain, to preach the word of God to the Picts."
| DETAIL FROM THE DURHAM BOOK |
The intricacy of the interlacing decoration is so minute that it is impossible to describe it. Each line may be followed to its conclusion, with the aid of a strong magnifying glass, but cannot be clearly traced with the naked eye. Westwood reports that, with a microscope, he counted in one square inch of the page, one hundred and fifty-eight interlacements of bands, each being of white, bordered on either side with a black line. In this book there is no use of gold, and the treatment of the human form is most inadequate. There is no idea of drawing except for decorative purposes; it is an art of the pen rather than of the brush—it hardly comes into the same category as most of the books designated as illuminated manuscripts. The so-called Durham Book, or the Gospels of St. Cuthbert, was executed at the Abbey of Lindisfarne, in 688, and is now in the British Museum. There is a legend that in the ninth century pirates plundered the Abbey, and the few monks who survived decided to seek a situation less unsafe than that on the coast, so they gathered up their treasures, the body of the saint, their patron, Cuthbert, and the book, which had been buried with him, and set out for new lands. They set sail for Ireland, but a storm arose, and their boat was swamped. The body and the book were lost. After reaching land, however, the fugitives discovered the box containing the book, lying high and dry upon the shore, having been cast up by the waves in a truly wonderful state of preservation. Any one who knows the effect of dampness upon parchment, and how it cockles the material even on a damp day, will the more fully appreciate this miracle.