ILLUMINATED, OR VELLUM-PAINTING.
AS it is the duty of a faithful journalist not only to "hit the follies of the day," but to study the tastes of the times, we have now ventured to make a few remarks on an art which has of late been revived, and which is now not only much practised as an accomplishment, but widely diffused as a means of general ornamentation. A slight sketch of its history will perhaps form a not unacceptable introduction to our subject.
It would appear that the metallic portions, and the general idea of illuminated painting, have been familiar to Oriental nations for ages; numberless traces of it, as applied to decorative purposes, having been discovered among those memorials now existing of the early Persian, Arabian, and Moorish races. The Egyptians, too, appear to have possessed the art of adding burnished gold or silver to their paintings; but whether they ever thus ornamented manuscripts is not known to us—in all probability they did not. Neither do the more ancient inhabitants of Italy appear to have applied it to manuscripts, for none of those discovered amid the ruins of the buried cities of Herculaneum and Pompeii are illuminated.
Many writers have surmised that manuscripts were not thus decorated until they began to assume something of the folio form; certainly, we are not aware of any traces of illuminating having been found in those rolled manuscripts which have descended to us. "The Dioscorides" in the Library of Vienna, and the celebrated copy of "Virgil" in the Vatican at Rome—both of which are supposed to date back so far as the fourth century—are believed to be the oldest examples of illuminated MSS. extant; and these can scarcely claim to be termed illuminated, for they only differ from ordinary manuscripts in having colored capitals. It is not until the seventh century that we find this art practised in any part of Great Britain; and then, in its earliest form, it simply consisted in staining the vellum purple or rose color, or inscribing the characters in gold. In the British Museum is a splendid MS., termed the "Golden Gospels," supposed to date from about the eighth century; its text is entirely of gold. There are some beautiful decorations in this valuable and curious relic of the patience, industry, and artistic powers of our Anglo-Saxon ancestors. There is another illuminated manuscript copy of the Gospels in the Archiepiscopal Library at Lambeth Palace, supposed to be nine hundred years old, and to have been painted by Moelbrigid Mac Durnan, Abbot of Derry, for Athelstan, who presented it to the city of Canterbury.
In those early ages, illuminating was applied only to religious and devotional MSS.; and it was chiefly done by members of the religious orders, for a very good reason—that they appear to have been almost the sole depositories of what learning and fine arts then existed. The celebrated St. Dunstan is said to have been a skilful illuminator, and is represented, in one of the pictures of an old manuscript, as busily at work decorating a missal.
The earlier specimens of illuminating which have descended to us are mostly crude and simple, consisting chiefly of colored capitals, stained ground, and metallic letters. For several ages the art does not appear to have made much progress, except that the capital letters increase in size, in ornament and beauty; and about the twelfth century we find them assuming a gigantic height, abounding in florid development, gorgeous in hues, and often exquisite in execution. In the early part of the fourteenth century an alteration is perceptible—the MS. pages assume an illuminated border, which at first only passes down one side, but gradually extends along the top and the bottom of the page; and, after a lapse of years, constitutes a complete frame to the text.
These borders at first consist simply of foliage or scrolls; but, as the art improves, and doubtless is more fostered and patronized, arabesques are introduced, in which forms of marvellous grace and beauty, linked in inextricable twinings, shine forth in all the gorgeous hues of a brilliant sunset; and these are, at a later period, gemmed with medallions or miniature paintings, illustrative of portfolios of the text. Indeed, several of the most celebrated painters of those days did not disdain to enrich MSS. for some high personage with specimens of their artistic skill. This continued until the middle of the sixteenth century.
Subsequently, a progressive decline in the excellence and artistic beauty of illuminated painting becomes very evident. It is true that, in the middle of the seventeenth century, it was florid, gorgeous, and, to a certain degree, admirable, but it was not the beauty of art; the rococo taste was beginning to dawn—that strange exuberance of fancy which heaped in one mass the most incongruous details, and was often more cumbrous and grotesque than graceful and harmonious. Nor was it probably only to this cause that the decline in the art may be attributed—the introduction of printing, and its gradual diffusion, had made manuscripts less valuable. The Reformation also, doubtless, had its share in depreciating illuminated painting, which soon ceased to be practised to any extent—excepting in Catholic countries—for the decoration of missals.
Then comes a period of some hundred or hundred and fifty years, during which the art may almost be said to be extinct; nor is it until within the last ten or twenty years that it has received much attention. Then, when lithographic printing, and various similar improvements, facilitated the reproduction of an indefinite number of copies of any given subject, and the still further invention of color-printing and chromo-lithography came into exercise, the value of a study of illuminated painting was perceived, and its applicability to all purposes of literary ornamentation developed. The title-pages of albums, of music, and of annuals; the covers of magazines and books; the initial letters of articles in periodicals; the decorations on circulars, cards, labels, and numberless other similar productions, whether printed, colored, gilded, or stamped—all will be found more or less derivable from the old style of illuminated manuscripts; indeed, a person who has not studied it can form little idea how largely its principles enter into all this kind of decorations.