It may enable the reader to form a clearer idea of what these highly ornamented volumes were like if I extract the full description of one which was lately in the catalogue of an eminent London bookseller:—It was a Book of Hours, written in France at the beginning of the sixteenth century, or, say during the reign of our Henry the Seventh, 1485 to 1509. It consisted of seventy-seven leaves of vellum, which measured about seven inches by five, with an illuminated border to every page. There were twenty miniatures, some the size of the full page and some smaller. The borders were composed of flowers and fruit, interspersed with grotesque animals, birds, and human figures, most eccentrically conceived. Both the capital letters and the borders were heightened with gold, sometimes flat, and sometimes brilliantly burnished.[1] This is, of course, an unusually rich example. About the same period great pains were taken to ornament the calendar with which these books usually commenced. Some of these Calendars consist simply of a picture in a gold frame, the composition so arranged that it does not suffer by a large blank space being left in the middle. In this space the calendar was written; and the rest of the page was occupied with an agricultural scene, emblematic of the season. In the sky above, painted in gold shell on the blue, was the sign of the zodiac appropriate to each month. In some the border was in compartments. One compartment contained the name of the month in gold letters or a monogram. Another contained an agricultural scene, another the zodiacal sign, another a flower, and the rest the figures of the principal saints of the month.
[1] The miniatures were as follows:—1. The Annunciation, a beautiful miniature with the border painted upon a gold ground; this is the case with all the borders containing miniatures. 2. The Meeting of Mary and Elizabeth. 3. The Infant Jesus lying in the manger at the Inn at Bethlehem, Joseph and the Virgin Mary kneeling in adoration. 4. The Announcement of the Birth of the Saviour to the Shepherds by night. 5. The Worship of the Magi. 6. The Presentation in the Temple. 7. The Journey into Egypt. 8. The Coronation of the Virgin. 9. The Crucifixion. 10. The Descent of the Holy Spirit on the Day of Pentecost. 11. Saint Anthony; a small miniature. 12. The Martyrdom of Saint Sebastian; a small miniature. 13. King David at his devotions in a chamber within his Palace. 14. The Raising of Lazarus. 15. The Virgin Mary with the Infant Jesus, guarded by angels; a small miniature. 16. The body of Jesus taken down from the Cross. 17. Saint Quentin the Martyr. 18. Saint Adrian. 19. Mater Dolorosa. 20. The Virgin and Child. The four last were small.
The student turns with relief from this comparative monotony to Chronicles in which historical scenes are given. One of the oldest is among the Harleian Manuscripts in the British Museum, and relates to the deposition of Richard II. It has been engraved in Archæologia, vol. xx., so that it is accessible wherever there is a good library. A little later French romances were similarly decorated, and we have innumerable pictures to illustrate the manners and costumes of the knights and ladies of whom we read in the stirring pages of Froissart.
Illumination did not decline at once with the invention of printing. On the contrary some exquisite borders and initials are found in books printed on vellum, one very well known example being a New Testament in the Lambeth Library, which was long mistaken for a manuscript, though it is, in reality, a portion of the Great Bible supposed to have been printed at Mentz before 1455, and to be the earliest work of the press of Fust and Schoyffer. A few wealthy people had Prayer-books illuminated for their own use down to a comparatively recent period. The celebrated Jarry wrote exquisite little volumes for Louis XIV. and his courtiers. A very fine Book of Hours was in the Bragge Collection, and must have been written in the sixteenth century, perhaps for some widow of rank in France. It contained sixteen miniatures which closely resembled Limoges enamels, the only decided color used being the carnation for the faces, the rest of the design being in black, white, gold, and a peculiar pearly grey. Each page had a border of black and gold. From another manuscript, a Book of Hours written in France in the fourteenth century (and exhibited at the Burlington Club by Mr. Robert Young), we have some outline tracings of the ivy pattern (see page 12). The famous illuminations of Giulio Clovio (a native of Croatia, who practised in Italy 1498-1578) hardly deserve the admiration they receive. They are in fact small pictures, the colors very crude and bright, and without the solemnity which attaches to ancient religious art. An illuminated work by Clovio was recently sold in London for the enormous sum of £2050. It had been long in the possession of an old Lancashire family, and is believed to have been illuminated for Cardinal Alexander Farnese, and by him presented to his uncle Paul III., who was pope between 1534 and 1550. In England the latest illuminators became the first miniature painters; and the succession of English artists is carried on from Godemann and Paris, through Nicholas Hilliard (1547-1619) and Isaac Oliver (1556-1617), to the school of Cooper (1609-1672) and Dobson, whose portraits are on vellum.
Conversion of St. Paul,
by Giulio Clovio.
From "St. Paul's Epistle
to the Romans,"
in the Soane Museum.
Short as is this survey of the history of Illumination, it will not do to omit all reference to Heraldry. Heraldic manuscripts, it is curious to remark, are rarely illuminated with borders or initials; but in the Chronicles of Matthew Paris shields of arms are frequently introduced with good effect. Occasionally in Books of Hours the arms of the person for whom the work was undertaken are placed in the border. Some fine examples of this kind are to be found in the so-called Bedford Missal, which is really a Book of Hours, and was written for John, Duke of Bedford, the brother of Henry V. Most of the manuscripts now extant on the subject are of late date and rude execution, consisting chiefly of rolls of arms, catalogues with shields in "trick"—that is, sketched with the colors indicated by a letter, or lists of banners, of which last a fine example is in the library of the College of Arms. Heraldry may be studied to advantage by the modern illuminator, who should endeavour to become so conversant with the various charges that in making a border or filling a letter he may be able to introduce them artistically without violating the strict laws of the "science." A late but very beautiful MS., in four little square volumes, which belongs to Mr. Malcolm of Poltalloch, has been identified as having been written for Bona of Savoy, duchess of Milan, who died in 1494. This identification has been made by means of the frequent occurrence of her badge and mottoes in the borders, many of which contain other devices of a semi-heraldic character, such as a phoenix, which is known to have been a favourite emblem of the duchess, an ermine, a rabbit, and a child playing with a serpent or dragon, all of them allusive to the heraldry of the lady and her husband. The study of heraldry has a further advantage in offering certain fixed rules about the use of colors which may help the student to attain harmony, and also in accustoming the eye and the hand to adapting certain forms to the place they have to fill, as for instance, the rampant lion within his shield, so as to leave as little vacant space as possible.
Some examples of animals treated in heraldic style will be found interspersed in this work as tailpieces. One of these, at the end of the Contents, represents a wild boar, to whose neck a mantle, bearing a coat of arms, is attached. It will be understood that what are called in heraldry "supporters" were a knight's attendants, who disguised themselves as beasts, and held their master's shield at the door of his tent at a tournament. The figures cannot, therefore, be too much conventionalized. (See the examples shown in Plate VII.) Some of the other designs are from the Rows Roll, a heraldic manuscript of the time of the Wars of the Roses. Some beautiful heraldic designs are to be found in Drummond's Noble Families. They were drawn by Mr. Montagu, the author of a charming volume on Heraldry.
Our facsimile reproductions of ancient manuscripts have been selected with a view to supply such examples as are most likely to prove useful to the student. For this purpose we have preferred in several instances to present the whole page with its writing complete, so that the modern illuminator may see how the ancient one worked, and how he arranged his painting and his writing with respect to each other.
To this we may add, that for the rest we have chosen our examples as much as possible because they were pretty, instructive, and of English workmanship, a majority of our pictures being copied from manuscripts written in our own country. I need only call attention to the well known but very beautiful style usually called the "English flower pattern," which admits of an endless series of variations and even improvements, and which is as characteristic of our mediæval painters as the Perpendicular style in Gothic is of our architects, both having flourished here and here only during a long period.