The vibrant luminosity of gold leaf, as it reflected light from the pages of handwritten books, gives the sensation of the page being literally illuminated; thus, this dazzling effect gave birth to the term illuminated manuscript. Today this name is used for all decorated and illustrated handwritten books produced from the late Roman Empire until printed books replaced manuscripts after typography was developed in Europe around 1450. Two great traditions of manuscript illumination are the Eastern in Islamic countries and the Western in Europe, dating from classical antiquity. Sacred writings held great meaning for Christians, Jews, and Muslims. The use of visual embellishment to expand the word became very important, and illuminated manuscripts were produced with extraordinary care and design sensitivity.
Manuscript production was costly and time-consuming. Parchment and vellum, writing surfaces made from animal hide, took hours to prepare, and a large book might require the skins of three hundred animals. Black ink for lettering was prepared from fine soot or lampblack. Gum and water were mixed with sanguine or red chalk to produce a red ink for headings and paragraph marks. A brown ink was formulated from “irongall,” a mixture of iron sulfate and oak apples, which are oak galls caused by wasp larvae. Colors were created from a variety of mineral, animal, and vegetable matter. A vibrant, deep blue was made from lapis lazuli, a precious mineral mined only in Afghanistan that found its way to monasteries as far away as Ireland. Gold (and, less frequently, silver) was applied in two ways: sometimes it was ground into a powder and mixed into a gold paint, but this left a slightly grainy surface, so the preferred application method was hammering the gold into a fine sheet of gold leaf and applying it over an adhesive ground. Burnishing for texture, punching, and tooling with metalworking tools were often used on gold leaf for design effects. Books were bound between wooden boards usually covered with leather. Decorative patterns were applied by tooling the leather, and important liturgical manuscripts often had precious jewels, gold- and silverwork, enameled designs, or ivory carving on their covers.
During the early Christian era, nearly all books were created in the monastic scriptorium, or writing room, where access was prohibited to those who were not scribes. The head of the scriptorium was the scrittori, a well-educated scholar who understood Greek and Latin and functioned as both editor and art director, with overall responsibility for the design and production of the manuscripts. The copisti was a production letterer, who spent his days bent over a writing table penning page after page in a trained lettering style. The copisti was not allowed to correct what he considered errors in the texts. He could, however, correct his own mistake by removing the ink with a razor and repairing the place with a whiting substance. The parchment was far too valuable to discard. The illuminator, or illustrator, was an artist responsible for the execution of ornament and image in visual support of the text. The word was supreme, and the scrittori controlled the scriptorium. He laid out the pages to indicate where illustrations were to be added after the text was written. Sometimes this was done with a light sketch, but often a note jotted in the margin told the illustrator what to draw in the space.
The colophon of a manuscript or book is an inscription, usually at the end, containing facts about its production. Often the scribe, designer, or, later, printer is identified. A number of colophons describe the work of the copisti as difficult and tiring. In the colophon of one illuminated manuscript, a scribe named George declared, “As the sailor longs for a safe haven at the end of his voyage, so does the writer for the last word.” Another scribe, Prior Petris, described writing as a terrible ordeal that “dims your eyes, makes your back ache, and knits one’s chest and stomach together.” The reader was then advised to turn the pages carefully and to keep his finger far from the text.
In addition to preserving classical literature, the scribes working in medieval monasteries invented musical notation. Leo Treitler describes this in his book With Voice and Pen: Coming to Know the Medieval Song and How It Was Made (Oxford, 2003). As early as the ninth century, punctuation marks were gradually introduced to denote pauses and pitch changes for chants, eventually leading to the five-line staff. In addition to the Carolingian minuscule and the adaptation of Arabic numerals, musical notation is one of the most important contributions of medieval graphic design.
The illustration and ornamentation in manuscripts were not mere decoration. The monastic leaders were mindful of the educational value of pictures and the ability of ornament to create mystical and spiritual overtones. Most illuminated manuscripts were small enough to fit into a saddlebag. This portability enabled the transmission of knowledge and ideas from one region to another and one time period to another. Manuscript production over the thousand-year course of the medieval era created a vast vocabulary of graphic forms, page layouts, illustration and lettering styles, and techniques. Regional isolation and difficult travel caused innovation and influences to spread very slowly, so identifiable regional design styles emerged. Some of the more distinctive schools of manuscript production can be ranked as major innovations in graphic design.
The classical style
In classical antiquity, the Greeks and Romans designed and illustrated manuscripts, but few have survived. The Egyptian Book of the Dead was probably an influence. The fabulous Greek library at Alexandria, where late Egyptian culture met early classical culture, presumably contained many illustrated manuscripts. A fire during the time of Julius Caesar (100–44 bce) destroyed this great library and its seven hundred thousand scrolls. In the few surviving fragments of illustrated scrolls, the layout approach features numerous small illustrations drawn with a crisp, simple technique and inserted throughout the text. Their frequency creates a cinematic graphic sequence somewhat like the contemporary comic book.
The invention of parchment, which was so much more durable than papyrus, and the codex format, which could take thicker paint because it did not have to be rolled, opened new possibilities for design and illustration. Literary sources refer to manuscripts on vellum, with a portrait of the author as a frontispiece.
The earliest surviving illustrated manuscript from the late antique and early Christian era is the Vatican Vergil. Created in the late fourth century or early fifth century ce, this volume contains two major works by Rome’s greatest poet, Publius Vergilius Maro (70–19 bce): his Georgics, poems on farming and country life; and the Aeneid, an epic narrative about Aeneas, who left the flaming ruins of Troy and set out to found a new city in the west. In this illustration (Fig. 4–1) two scenes depicting the demise of Laocoön, a priest punished by death for profaning the temple of Apollo, are shown in sequence within one image. At left, Laocoön calmly prepares to sacrifice a bull at the temple of Poseidon, oblivious to the approach of two serpents in the lake at the upper left corner. On the right, Laocoön and his two young sons are attacked and killed by the serpents.
A consistent design approach is used in the Vatican Vergil. The text is lettered in crisp rustic capitals, with one wide column on each page. Illustrations, framed in bright bands of color (frequently red), are the same width as the text column. These are placed at the top, middle, or bottom of the page, adjacent to the passage illustrated. There are six full-page illustrations, and the illustrator neatly lettered the names of the major figures upon their pictures in the manner of present-day political cartoonists.
The Vatican Vergil is completely Roman and pagan in its conception and execution. The lettering is Roman, and the illustrations echo the rich colors and illusionistic space of the wall frescoes preserved at Pompeii. This pictorial and historical method of book illustration, so similar to late Roman painting, combined with rustic capitals, represents the classical style. It was used in many early Christian manuscripts and characterizes late Roman book design.
After the Western Roman Empire collapsed in 476 ce, an era of dislocation and uncertainty ensued. Cities degenerated and became small villages; officials left their duties and moved to their country estates; government and law ceased to exist. Trade and commerce slumped and almost became nonexistent, for travel became extremely dangerous. Europe’s regional languages, customs, and geographic divisions started to form in isolated areas during this period. The general population languished in illiteracy, poverty, and superstition.
The thousand-year medieval (meaning “middle”) era lasted from the fifth-century fall of Rome until the fifteenth-century Renaissance. The centuries following the decline of Rome saw Barbarian and Roman influences combine to produce a rich and colorful design vocabulary in the arts and crafts. Although the medieval era has been called the Dark Ages, there was nothing dark about the crafts of the period. The knowledge and learning of the classical world were almost entirely lost, but the Christian belief in sacred religious writings became the primary impetus for the preservation and making of books. Christian monasteries were the cultural, educational, and intellectual centers.
As early as the third century ce, majestic page designs were achieved in early Christian manuscripts by dyeing parchment a deep and costly purple color and lettering the text in silver and gold. The monastic graphic artists who produced these works were severely reprimanded by Saint Jerome (c. 347–420 ce), who, in his preface to a manuscript Book of Job, blasted the practice as a useless and wasteful extravagance.
The evolution of letter styles was based on a continuing search for simpler and faster letterform construction and writing ease. Two important new techniques came into prominence during the late antique and early Christian periods. Both were primarily used within the Christian church from the fourth until the ninth century ce and have retained this association. As mentioned earlier, the uncials (Fig. 4–2), so named because they were written between two guidelines that were one uncia (the Roman inch) apart, were actually invented by the Greeks as early as the third century bce. In a Greek wooden tablet from 326 ce (see Fig. 2–12), the primary characteristics of uncials are seen. Uncials are rounded, freely drawn majuscule letters more suited to rapid writing than either square capitals or rustic capitals. The curves reduced the number of strokes required to make many letterforms, and the number of angular joints—which have a tendency to clog up with ink—was significantly reduced. Certain letters in the uncial style threatened to develop ascenders (strokes rising above the top guideline) or descenders (strokes dropping below the baseline), but the design remained that of a majuscule or capital letter. A step toward the development of minuscules (small or “lowercase” letterforms) was the semiuncial or half-uncial (Fig. 4–3). Four guidelines instead of two were used, and strokes were allowed to soar above and sink below the two principal lines, creating true ascenders and descenders. The pen was held flatly horizontal to the baseline, which gave the forms a strong vertical axis. Half-uncials were easy to write and had increased legibility because the visual differentiation between letters was improved. Although some half-uncials appeared in the third century ce, they did not flourish until the late sixth century.
Celtic book design
The period from the collapse of Rome until the eighth century was a time of migration and upheaval throughout Europe, as different ethnic groups fought for territory. These unsettled times were the darkest decades of the medieval era. However, wandering hordes of Germanic Barbarians did not invade the island of Ireland, tucked in the far corner of Europe, and the Celts living there enjoyed relative isolation and peace. In the early fifth century ce, the legendary Saint Patrick and other missionaries began to rapidly convert the Celts to Christianity. In a fascinating melding of culture and religion, pagan temples were converted to churches, and Celtic ornaments were applied to chalices and bells brought to Ireland by the missionaries.
Celtic design is abstract and extremely complex; geometric linear patterns weave, twist, and fill a space with thick visual textures, and bright, pure colors are used in close juxtaposition. This Celtic craft tradition of intricate, highly abstract decorative patterns was applied to book design in the monastic scriptoria, and a new concept and image of the book emerged. A series of manuscripts containing the four narratives of the life of Christ are the summit of Celtic book design. Written and designed around 680 ce, the Book of Durrow (or Durmachensis) is the earliest fully designed and ornamented Celtic book. The Book of Durrow was first assumed to have been created in Ireland. However, it is now thought to have come from the British Isles, but to have been written and decorated by Irish scribes.
The Lindisfarne Gospels (also known as the Book of Lindisfarne or Lindisfarnensis), written by Eadfrith, bishop of Lindisfarne, before 698 ce, represents the full flowering of the Celtic style. The masterwork of the epoch is the Book of Kells, created at the island monastery of Iona around 800 ce. Countless hours of work were lavished upon individual pages, whose vibrant color and form are in distinct contrast to the stark, reclusive environment and rule of silence found in the monastic scriptorium.
Ornament was used in three ways: ornamental frames or borders were created to enclose full-page illustrations (Fig. 4–4); opening pages of each gospel and other important passages were singled out for illumination, particularly by the design of ornate initials (Fig. 4–5); and full pages of decorative design called carpet pages were bound into the manuscript. This name developed because the densely packed design had the intricate patterning associated with oriental carpets. As a carpet page from the Lindisfarne Gospels shows (Fig. 4–6), a seventh-century Celtic cross or other geometric motif became an organizing form that brought structure to the interlaces and lacertines filling the space. The interlace was a two-dimensional decoration formed by a number of ribbons or straps woven into a complex, usually symmetrical design. It is evident that drafting instruments were used to construct many of the designs in Celtic manuscripts. Interlaces created by animal forms were called lacertines. Most of the forms were either invented from imagination or based on earlier models. Careful observation of nature was not required of the Celtic designer or illustrator.
Large initials on the opening pages grew bigger as the decades passed. Integration of these initials with the rest of the text was a challenging design problem. The monks resolved it with a graphic principle called diminuendo, which is a decreasing scale of graphic information. On the opening page of the Gospel of Saint Mark in the Book of Durrow, the first letters of the word Initium create a large monogram thrusting down the page. The large double initial is followed in decreasing size by a smaller initial, the last four letters of the first word, the next two words, and the text. This descending scale unites the large initial with the text. Red S-shaped lines or dots link each text line to the initial and further unify the elements. The red dot pattern transforms the first three words into rectangles and contours the first letters of each verse. Ultimately, a harmonious design system is created. These red dots were used profusely, and watercolor washes often filled the negative spaces inside and between letters. Sometimes pigments were handled thickly and opaquely; at other times they were thin and as translucent as enamel.
In the Gospels the name of Christ is first mentioned in the eighteenth verse of the first chapter of Matthew. To indicate this, the illuminator created a graphic explosion using the monogram XPI. This letter combination—used to write “Christ” in manuscripts—is called the Chi-Rho, after the first two letters of the Greek word for “Christ,” chi (X) and rho (P). The Chi-Rho in the Book of Kells (Fig. 4–7) is composed of shimmering color and intricate, convoluted form blossoming over a whole page. On another page the authors of the four gospels were signified by symbolic beings (Fig. 4–8). Having Saint Mark represented by a lion, Saint Luke by an ox, and Saint John by an eagle is part of a pagan tradition with its origin in Egyptian culture.
A radical design innovation in Celtic manuscripts was leaving a space between words to enable the reader to separate the string of letters into words more quickly. The half-uncial script journeyed to Ireland with the early missionaries and was subtly redesigned into the scriptura scottica—or “insular script” (Figs. 4–5 and 4–9), as it is now called—to suit local visual traditions. These half-uncials became the national letterform style in Ireland and are still used for special writings and as a typestyle. Written with a slightly angled pen, the full, rounded characters have a strong bow, with ascenders bending to the right. A heavy triangle perches at the top of ascenders, and the horizontal stroke of the last letter of the word, particularly e or t, zips out into the space between words. The text page from the Book of Kells shows how carefully the insular script was lettered. Characters are frequently joined at the waistline or the baseline.
Ironically, these beautiful, carefully lettered half-uncials convey a text that is careless and contains misspellings and misreadings. Even so, the Book of Kells is the culmination of Celtic illumination. Its noble design has generous margins and huge initial letters. Far more full-page illustrations than in any other Celtic manuscript are executed with a remarkable density and complexity of form; over 2,100 ornate capitals make every page a visual delight. Through the course of its 339 leaves, sentences intermittently bloom into full-page illuminations.
The magnificent Celtic school of manuscript design ended abruptly before the Book of Kells was completed. In 795 ce northern raiders made their first appearance on the Irish coast, and a period of intense struggle between the Celts and the Vikings followed. Both Lindisfarne and Iona, seats of two of the greatest scriptoria in medieval history, were destroyed. When the invading Norsemen swarmed over the island of Iona, where the Book of Kells was being completed in the monastic scriptorium, escaping monks took it to Kells and continued to work on it there. It can only be guessed whether or not majestic illuminated manuscripts were lost, or what magnificent volumes might have been designed had peace and stability continued for the Celts of Ireland.
The Caroline graphic renewal
When Charlemagne (742–814 ce), king of the Franks since 768 and the leading ruler of central Europe, rose from prayer in Saint Peter’s Cathedral in Rome on Christmas Day, 800 ce, Pope Leo III (d. 816 ce) placed a crown on his head and declared him emperor of what became known as the Holy Roman Empire. The whole of central Europe was united under Charlemagne in an empire that was neither Roman nor particularly holy. Nevertheless, it attempted to recapture the grandeur and unity of the Roman Empire in a Germanic and Christian federation. In addition to restoring the concept of empire to the West, Charlemagne introduced the feudal system, where landowning noblemen held dictatorial power over peasants who toiled in the fields, in an effort to bring order to chaotic medieval society.
Although by some reports he was illiterate except to sign his name, Charlemagne fostered a revival of learning and the arts. The England of the 700s had seen much intellectual activity, and Charlemagne recruited the English scholar Alcuin of York (c. 732–804 ce) to come to his palace at Aachen and establish a school. Except for the Celtic pattern-making tradition, book design and illumination had sunk to a low ebb in most of Europe. Illustrations were poorly drawn and composed, and writing had become localized and undisciplined in the hands of poorly trained scribes. Many manuscripts were difficult, if not impossible, to read. Charlemagne mandated reform by royal edict in 789 ce. At the court in Aachen, a turba scriptorium (“crowd of scribes,” as Alcuin called them) was assembled to prepare master copies of important religious texts. Then books and scribes were dispatched throughout Europe to disseminate the reforms.
Standardization of page layout, writing style, and decoration was attempted. Efforts to reform the alphabet succeeded. For a model, the ordinary writing script of the late antique period was selected, combined with Celtic innovations, including the use of four guidelines, ascenders, and descenders, and then molded into an ordered uniform script called Caroline minuscule (Fig. 4–10). The Caroline minuscule is the forerunner of our contemporary lowercase alphabet. This clear set of letterforms was practical and easy to write. Characters were set apart instead of joined, and the number of ligatures was reduced. Much writing had become a slurred scrawl; the new alphabet restored legibility.
The Caroline minuscule became the standard throughout Europe for a time, but as the decades passed, writing in many areas veered toward regional characteristics. Roman capitals were studied and adopted for headings and initials of great beauty. These were not calligraphic but carefully drawn and built up with more than one stroke. The use of a dual alphabet was not fully developed in the sense that we use capital and small letters today, but a process in that direction had begun. In addition to graphic reforms, the court at Aachen revised sentence and paragraph structure as well as punctuation. The Carolingian revival of scholarship and learning stayed a serious loss of human knowledge and writings that had been occurring through the early medieval period.
When early manuscripts from the late antique period and Byzantine culture were imported for study, illuminators were shocked and stunned by the naturalism and illusion of deep space in the illustrations. The two-dimensional style suddenly seemed passé in the face of this “picture-window” style, where space moved back into the page from a decorative frame and clothes seemed to wrap the forms of living human figures. Lacking the skill or basic knowledge of the antique artists, Carolingian illuminators began to copy these images, with sometimes uneven results. The classical heritage was revived as accurate drawing and illusionistic techniques were mastered by some illuminators. Figurative imagery and ornament, which had been scrambled together in earlier medieval illumination, separated into distinct design elements.
In a manuscript book such as the Coronation Gospels (Fig. 4–11), designed and produced at the court of Charlemagne in the late eighth century ce, a classical yet somewhat primitive elegance emerges. The two facing pages are unified by their exactly equal margins. Initial letters echo Roman monumental capitals, and the text appears to be closely based on the insular script of Ireland. Rustic capitals are used for supplementary materials, including chapter lists, introductory words, and prefaces. Whether this book was designed, lettered, and illuminated by scribes brought in from Italy, Greece, or Constantinople is not known. The creators of this book understood the lettering and painting methods of classical culture. Legend claims that in the year 1000 ce, Emperor Otto III (980–1002 ce) of the Holy Roman Empire journeyed to Aachen, opened Charlemagne’s tomb, and found him seated on a throne with the Coronation Gospels on his lap. Elegant examples of manuscripts written in Caroline minuscule include the Capitularies of Charlemagne and Louis the Pious from c. 873 ce (Fig. 4–12) and a Latin version of Pope Gregory the Great’s Moralia in Job (Commentary on Job), created in France during the eleventh or twelfth century (Fig. 4–13).
Spanish pictorial expressionism
On the Iberian Peninsula, isolated from the rest of Europe by mountains, the scriptoria did not experience the initial impact of the Carolingian renewal. In 711 ce, a Moorish army under the Arab governor of Tangier crossed the Strait of Gibraltar and crushed the Spanish army. Even the Spanish king was among those missing in action. Moorish settlers mingled Islamic design motifs with Christian traditions to create unique manuscript designs.
A number of Islamic design motifs filtered into Spanish Christian manuscripts. Flat shapes of intense color were used. Sometimes they were sprinkled with stars, rosettes, polygons, or garlands in optically active contrasting colors. Flat, schematic drawing had prominent outlines. The two-dimensional aggressive color created a frontal intensity that obliterated any hint of atmosphere or illusion. A pagan tradition of totemic animals dates back through Islamic northern Africa to Persia to ancient Mesopotamia, and these ghastly creatures reared their frightful heads in Spanish illumination. Decorative frames enclosed most illustrations, with intricate patterns evoking the richly colored geometric designs applied to Moorish architecture in tilework and molded and chiseled decorations.
There was a fascination with designs of intricate geometry and intense, pure color. In the commemorative labyrinth from another version of Pope Gregory’s Moralia in Job of 945 ce, the scribe Florentius designed a labyrinth page (Fig. 4–14) bearing the words Florentium indignum memorare, which modestly ask the reader to “remember the unworthy Florentius.” Florentius’s humility is belied by the dazzling graphic treatment and its position opposite the monogram of Christ. Labyrinth arrangements of commemorative messages date from ancient Greece and Rome and were quite popular in medieval manuscripts.
For the medieval faithful, life was but a prelude to eternal salvation, if the individual could triumph in the battle between good and evil raging on earth. Supernatural explanations were still assigned to natural phenomena that were not understood; eclipses, earthquakes, plague, and famine were seen as dire warnings and punishments. People believed a terrible destruction awaited the earth as foretold by the biblical Book of Revelation. It suggested a date, “When the thousand years had expired,” as a likely time for the Last Judgment. Many considered the year 1000 ce the probable end of the world; concern mounted as the year drew nigh. Among numerous interpretations of Revelation, the Commentary of Beatus on the Apocalypse of Saint John the Divine was widely read. The monk Beatus (730–798 ce) of Liebana in northern Spain wrote this harrowing interpretation in 776 ce. Graphic artists gave visual form to the fearful end of the world in numerous copies penned and illustrated throughout Spain. The monastic dictum Pictura est laicorum literatura (The picture is the layman’s literature) evidences the motivation for illustrations conveying information to the illiterate. Combining Christian prophecy with Moorish design influences, they succeeded admirably. The Book of Revelation is laced with rich, expressive imagery, and pictures assumed an importance rivaling that of the text. Full-page illustrations appeared frequently.
Over sixty different passages are illustrated in twenty-three surviving copies. Stark, symbolic descriptions challenged the artist’s mind as Beatus’s interpretation of this prophecy was visualized. This is the most forceful interpretation of the Apocalypse in graphic art before Albrecht Dürer’s intricate woodcut illustrations in the early 1500s (see Fig. 6–13).
On New Year’s Eve, 999 ce, many Europeans gathered to await the final judgment. Some reportedly spent the night naked on their cold rooftops waiting for the end. When nothing happened, new interpretations of the “thousand years” phrase were made, and manuscript copies of Beatus’s Commentary continued to be produced. In the masterful Beatus of Fernando and Sancha of 1047 ce, the scribe and illuminator Facundus drew schematic figures acting out the final tragedy in a hot and airless space created by flat horizontal bands of pure hue. The thick color is bright and clear. Chrome yellow, cobalt blue, red ocher, and intense green are slammed together in jarring contrasts. The Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse (Fig. 4–15), who are traditionally War, Famine, Pestilence, and Death, ride forth to unleash their terror upon the world.
Revelation 8:12 tells, “The fourth angel sounded, and the third part of the sun was smitten, and the third part of the moon, and the third part of the stars, so as the third part of them was darkened, and the day shown not for a third part of it, and the night likewise” (Fig. 4–16). The sun (labeled sol) and the moon (labeled luna) are one-third white and two-thirds red, to illustrate that one-third of each had fallen away. A sinister eagle flies into the space screaming, “Woe, woe, woe to those who dwell on the earth.” As an iconic symbol, this angel is worlds away from the pure white angel of hope in later Christian imagery. Inspired by words in the Apocalypse, “I am the alpha and the omega, the beginning and the end,” Facundus designed the first page of the Beatus of Fernando and Sancha as a huge illuminated A (alpha, the first letter of the Greek alphabet), and the last page as a huge illuminated O (omega, the last letter).
During the early eleventh century ce, the balance of power in Spain swung from the Moors to the Christians. Communications with other European countries improved, and Spanish manuscript design tilted toward the continental mainstream that developed from the Carolingian style. The expressionistic graphics filling Bibles, commentaries, and most especially the Commentary of Beatus yielded to other graphic approaches.
Romanesque and Gothic manuscripts
The Romanesque period (c. 1000–1150 ce) saw renewed religious fervor and even stronger feudalism. Europeans launched some ten crusades in a vigorous effort to conquer the Holy Lands. Monasticism reached its peak, and large liturgical books, including Bibles, Gospels, and psalters, were produced in the booming scriptoria. For the first time, universal design characteristics seemed possible, as visual ideas traveled back and forth on the pilgrimage routes. The illusionistic revival of the Carolingian era yielded to a new emphasis on linear drawing and a willingness to distort figures to meld with the overall design of the page. The representation of deep space became even less important, and figures were placed against backgrounds of gold leaf or textured patterns.
During the middle of the twelfth century the Romanesque period evolved into the Gothic, which lasted from 1150 ce until the European Renaissance began in fourteenth-century Italy. This transitional period saw the power of the feudal lords constrained by reasonable laws. Towns and villages grew into cities. Agriculture yielded to international trade as the foundation of political power, and money replaced land as the primary measure of wealth. European society was slowly transformed. Particularly in France and England, monarchies were supported by powerful noblemen, enabling more stable central governments to emerge. Uncertainty and fear, the daily companions of medieval peoples for centuries, diminished as the social and economic environment became more predictable, overcoming the wildly inconsistent conditions that prevailed in Romanesque times.
During the 1200s the rise of the universities created an expanding market for books. For example, twenty thousand of Paris’s hundred thousand residents were students who had moved to the city to attend the university there. Literacy was on the rise, and professional lay illuminators emerged to help meet the growing demand for books. The Pauline Epistles (Fig. 4–17) is an elegant example of the French Gothic style.
The Book of Revelation had a surge of unexplained popularity in England and France during the 1200s. A scriptorium at Saint Albans with high artistic standards seems to have figured prominently in this development. At least ninety-three copies of the Apocalypse survive from this period. A straightforward naturalism anchored in this world rather than a future one supplanted the horror and anxiety of the earlier Spanish editions.
The Douce Apocalypse (Fig. 4–18), written and illustrated around 1265 ce, is one of the many masterpieces of Gothic illumination. Each of the hundred illustrated pages (three are now missing) has an illustration above two columns of beautifully lettered text. The scribe used a lettering style whose repetition of verticals capped with pointed serifs has been compared to a picket fence. Textura (from the Latin texturum, meaning “woven fabric” or “texture”) is the favored name for this dominant mode of Gothic lettering. Other terms, such as the French lettre de forme and the English black letter and Old English, are vague and misleading. During its time, textura was called littera moderna (Latin for “modern lettering”). Textura was quite functional, for all the vertical strokes in a word were drawn first, then serifs and the other strokes needed to transform the group of verticals into a word were added. Rounded strokes were almost eliminated. Letters and the spaces between them were condensed in an effort to save space on the precious parchment. The overall effect is one of a dense black texture.
On each page of the Douce Apocalypse, an open square is left in the upper-left corner for an initial, but these letters were never added. Some illustrations, drawn but never painted, show an even line of great sensitivity and decisiveness. The illustrations are divided into segments by elaborate framing. In the illustration for the last passage of the seventh chapter of Revelation, the triumphant white-robed multitude who survived the great tribulation is shown surrounding a very human-looking God with his Lamb. Saint John’s soft-blue robe and rust-brown cloak set the tone for a mellow palette of blues, greens, reds, browns, grays, and yellows.
The Douce Apocalypse represents a new breed of picture book that established the page design of the fifteenth-century woodblock books that emerged after printing came to Europe. The scribe and illuminator are not known; in fact, scholars have argued over whether this book was created in England or France. This blurring of national origin evidences the trend toward an international Gothic style that pervaded the late Gothic period. It is characterized by elongated figures that rise upward in a vertical movement, often wearing elegant, fashionable costumes or flowing robes. Even though the figures are pulled upward, there is a conviction of solid, almost monumental weight and an expression of human dignity. Increased naturalism was seen in human, animal, and botanical subjects. Elements from the national styles of various countries were combined, and growing numbers of commissions for private books, particularly from royal patrons, enabled scribes and illuminators to travel and disseminate artistic conventions and techniques.
Liturgical books of the late medieval era contained extraordinary designs. The Ormesby Psalter (Fig. 4–19), created during the early 1300s in England, is a splendid example. Its generous 33.6-centimeter height allowed for illustrated capital initials containing biblical scenes on gold-leaf backgrounds. The large text is written in the textura writing style. The text area is surrounded by an intricate frame filled with decorative pattern capital initials and rich marginalia, which are thought to be visual clues suggesting appropriate parables and stories for the priest to tell the congregation after completing the scriptural reading. The page illustrated in Figure 4–19 has an owl/horse conferring with a man/snail at the top. At the bottom, a demon smugly watches a betrothal. The young maiden eagerly reaches for the falconer’s engagement ring; the symbolic cat and mouse below the couple hint that someone is being victimized. The everyday life of the people had found its way into the margins of religious books. Some historians have seen this as an early indication of an approaching Renaissance humanism, with its concern for the quality of human life on earth.
Judaic manuscripts
After the Babylonian Exile in 587 bce, and again after the Romans crushed Jewish revolts in 70 ce and 135 ce, the Jewish population in Israel was dispersed. Following the second revolt against the Romans, Israel ceased to exist as a political entity. The Jewish people, religion, and culture lived on in the Diaspora (Greek for “dispersion” or “scattering”) throughout the known world. Surviving Judaic illuminated manuscripts produced across Europe during the medieval epoch are treasured masterworks of graphic design. The common belief that Judaic traditions rejected figurative art is not entirely true. Artistic embellishment for educational reasons or to adorn religious objects, including manuscripts, was encouraged as a means of expressing reverence for sacred objects and writings.
Many of the finest Judaic illuminated manuscripts are haggadot, Jewish religious literature, including historical stories and proverbs, especially the saga of the Jewish exodus from Egypt. The Mainz Haggadah, copied by Moses ben Nathan Oppenheim in 1726 (Fig. 4–20), is an exemplary representative of this genre. The title page features both calligraphy and a typographic layout framed on the left by Moses holding the Ten Commandments and on the right by Aaron. A double-page spread (Fig. 4–21) shows two images: Mount Sinai, and the pharaoh and his army drowning in the Red Sea. Through the spacing and symbols, the typographic layout implies a melody associated with the rhythm and repetition of a buoyant Passover song.
The word was supreme; pictures played a supporting role and were pushed into generous margins at the sides or bottom of the space. The artist created illustrations using a delicately detailed pen-and-colored-ink technique. Drawings of people and animals are executed with great sensitivity.
Judaic illuminated manuscripts are relatively rare, but surviving copies evidence remarkable scholarship, meticulous illustrations, and calligraphic beauty.
Islamic manuscripts
Islam, one of the world’s great religions, emerged from Muhammad’s teachings as recorded in the Qur’an. This sacred book forms the divine authority for religious, social, and civil life in Islamic societies stretching south from the Baltic Sea to equatorial Africa, and eastward from the Atlantic coast of Africa to Indonesia. Hundreds of thousands of manuscript copies of the Qur’an have been made, from small pocket-sized versions to lavishly ornamented imperial editions. Muhammad called upon his followers to learn to read and write, and calligraphy quickly became an important tool for religion and government. His advocacy of women’s literacy resulted in many important female calligraphers and scholars. A love of books permeates Islamic cultures; libraries were larger in Islamic regions and manuscript production was far more prolific than in Europe. From the eighth to the fifteenth century ce, Islamic science was without peer, and over ten thousand scientific manuscripts from this epoch survive.
Islamic manuscript decoration emerged from modest origins. Early calligraphers who wrote seventh- and eighth-century copies of the Qur’an made their vowel marks ornate and drew rosettes to separate verses. Over the centuries, ornamentation became increasingly elaborate, with intricate geometric and arabesque designs filling the space to become transcendental expressions of the sacred nature of the Qur’an (Fig. 4–22). Geometric shapes containing calligraphy are surrounded by rhythmic organic designs ranging from plant forms to abstract arabesques.
Figurative illustrations were not utilized because Islamic society embraced the principle of aniconism, which is religious opposition to representations of living creatures. This was based on a belief that only God could create life and that mortals should not make figures of living things or create images that might be used as idols. While this principle was strictly upheld in many Muslim areas, such as North Africa and Egypt, pictures were tolerated in some Islamic regions as long as they were restricted to private quarters and palace harems.
Probably before the year 1000 ce, miniature paintings appeared in Persian books and became an important aspect of book illumination. Artists in Persia (now Iran) developed the defining attributes of illustrated Islamic manuscripts because the ruling shahs patronized the creation of masterworks containing elaborate detail, precise patterns, and vibrant color. Some of the finest Islamic manuscripts were designed during the Safavid dynasty (1502–1736); the influence of Persian artists spread to the Ottoman Empire (a domain founded by Turkish tribes, who conquered Constantinople in 1453 and ruled a vast empire for over four hundred years) and to the Mughals (also called Moguls—Muslims from Mongol, Turkey, and Persia who conquered and ruled India from 1526 to 1857). Mughal emperors established a major school of Islamic illumination after bringing Persian artists to India in the sixteenth century to train local artists. Birds, animals, plants, and architecture native to the region were incorporated into Mughal manuscripts.
Figure 4–23 typifies the illustrated Islamic manuscript. The professional and personal life of Indian Mughal emperor Shah Jahan (reigned 1628–58), who built masterworks of architecture, including the Taj Mahal, is recounted and illustrated with full-page and double-page illustrations. Calligraphic writing is contained in intricate panels. Open spaces between the lines of calligraphy are filled with organic gold configurations determined by the word shapes. These negative spaces become concrete forms. Text and illustrations are framed with multiple lines and surrounded by complex ornamental borders ranging from floral arabesques to repetitive patterns and architectonic geometric structures.
The meticulously painted illustrations are in the great tradition of Persian painting, which was primarily a book illustrator’s art dating from the 1300s. Space is flat and shallow; ground and floor planes are parallel to the picture plane. Figures and objects are described by meticulous contour lines containing flat, or sometimes subtly modulated, planes of color. Tonal modulation and light-and-shadow patterns are usually minimal or nonexistent. Architecture is defined by geometric planes. Intricate decorative patterns are applied to carpets, clothing, and structures. Plants are drawn as schematic stylizations, with careful attention to detail and a profuse repetition of blossoms and leaves. Chromatic energy is achieved through warm/cool and light/dark color combinations.
Islamic manuscript design had a long and varied tradition, with numerous schools, influences, and aesthetic approaches. Geographic proximity to Asia in the east and Europe in the west permitted an assimilation of design ideas from other cultures. For over a thousand years Islamic manuscripts maintained traditions of artistic excellence, with production continuing long after typographic printing completely replaced manuscript books elsewhere. Major works were commissioned as recently as the nineteenth century.
Late medieval illuminated manuscripts
During the transitional decades, as the medieval era yielded to the European Renaissance, the production of illuminated manuscripts for private use became increasingly important. In the early 1400s the Book of Hours became Europe’s most popular book (Fig. 4–24). This private devotional volume contained prayers, religious texts for each hour of the day, and calendars listing the days of important saints. The pinnacle of the European illuminated book was reached in the early fifteenth century, when French nobleman Jean, duc de Berry (1340–1416), a passionate lover of beautiful books and brother of King Charles V, installed the Limbourg brothers, of Dutch origin, in his castle to establish a private scriptorium. The duc de Berry owned one of the largest private libraries in the world at that time, with 155 books, including fourteen Bibles and fifteen Books of Hours.
Little is known about the brief lives of Paul (Pol), Herman (Hermann), and Jean (Jehannequin) Limbourg. It is believed that all three were born after 1385. Sons of a Dutch wood sculptor, all three apprenticed as goldsmiths and then probably trained at an important Paris scriptorium after 1400. The duc de Berry employed Paul Limbourg in 1408 to head his workshop. Paul was probably the designer responsible for layout and design. Apparently a close rapport developed between patron and designer/illustrator, for on New Year’s Day of 1411 the Limbourg brothers gave the duke a bogus book consisting of a wooden block bound in white velvet and locked with an enameled clasp decorated with his coat of arms.
In the early fifteenth century the Limbourgs were in the vanguard of an evolution in the interpretation of visual experience. The Gothic tendency toward abstraction and stylized presentation was reversed as they sought a convincing realism. Atmospheric perspective was used to push planes and volumes back in deep space, and a consistent effort toward achieving linear perspective was made. The Limbourgs’ exceptional gifts of observation combined with remarkable painting skill enabled them to propel illuminated book design and illustration to its zenith. Their work conveys a strong sense of mass and volume; in some illustrations highlights and cast shadows are created by a single light source.
The Limbourg brothers’ masterpiece was Les très riches heures du duc de Berry (Figs. 4–25 and 4–26). The first twenty-four pages are an illustrated calendar. Each month has a double-page spread with a genre illustration relating to seasonal activities of the month on the left page and a calendar of the saints’ days on the right. The illustrations are crowned with graphic astronomical charts depicting constellations and the phases of the moon. The winter farm scene for February includes a cutaway building with people warming themselves by a fire. The calendar page uses vibrant red and blue inks for the lettering. A pencil grid structure established the format containing the information.
Les très riches heures is a pictorial book. Illustrations dominate the page layouts. Some pages have a mere four lines of text lettered in two columns under the illustrations. Decorated initials spin off whirling acanthus foliage, which is sometimes accompanied by angels, animals, or flowers in the generous margins.
Apprentices were kept busy grinding colors on a marble slab with a muller. The medium consisted of water mixed with arabic or tragacanth gum as a binder to adhere the pigment to the vellum and preserve the image. The Limbourg brothers used a palette of ten colors, plus black and white. The colors included cobalt and ultramarine blue and two greens, one made from a carbonate of copper, the other from iris leaves. Gold leaf and gold-powder paint were used in profusion. The minute detail achieved implies the use of a magnifying lens.
The Limbourg brothers did not live to complete this masterpiece, for all three died before February 1416, and the duc de Berry died on 15 July 1416; perhaps they were victims of a terrible epidemic or plague believed to have swept through France that year. The inventory of the duke’s library, taken after his death, indicates that half his books were religious works, a third were history books, and volumes on geography, astronomy, and astrology rounded out the collection.
During the same years when the Limbourgs were creating handmade books, a new means of visual communication—woodblock printing—appeared in Europe. The invention of movable type in the West was but three decades away. The production of illuminated manuscripts continued through the fifteenth century and even into the early decades of the sixteenth century, but this thousand-year-old craft, dating back to antiquity, was doomed to extinction by the typographic book.