Illuminated Manuscripts in Classical and Mediaeval Times/Chapter 12

As has been already mentioned, the old classical forms survived in the manuscript miniatures of Italy for many centuries with but little alteration.

A slow, but steady degradation in the forms of classic art began to take place about the fifth or sixth century; the fact being that no art can for long remain stationary; there must be either advance or decay, and when the habit of copying older forms has once become the established rule an artistic degradation soon becomes inevitable.

Just as the manuscript art of the Byzantine illuminators first lost its vitality and then rapidly deteriorated, so in Italy the late surviving classical style of miniature became weaker and weaker in drawing, feebler in touch, and duller in composition, till in the eleventh and twelfth century a very low stage of degradation was reached, at the very period when the illuminator's art in more northern countries was growing into the most vigorous development of power and decorative beauty.

The great Renaissance of art in Italy, which led to such magnificent results in the fourteenth to the sixteenth centuries, in its first beginnings lagged behind the artistic movement in the north, so that during the thirteenth century, when England, France and Germany had almost reached their climax of artistic growth, Italy had hardly begun to advance.

As an example of the degraded state of Italian art during the twelfth century I may mention a manuscript in the Vatican library (Vat. 4922) of a poem in honour of the Countess Matilda written by a monk of Canossa named Donizo, which has a number of miniature illustrations. These are of the lowest type, utterly feeble in the drawing of the human form and quite without any feeling for the folds of drapery; the figures are mere shapeless masses without any decorative beauty of colour to make up for the helpless ignorance of the draughtsman; see fig. 47.

Later on in the twelfth century, and during the first half of the thirteenth century, art in Italy was mainly a feeble reflection of the then degraded art of the Byzantines. This was partly due to the introduction into Italy of mosaic-workers from Constantinople, such as those who decorated the vault of the old Cathedral of Florence (now the Baptistery) with badly drawn but grandly decorative mosaics of the Day of Doom.

Little is known of the two illuminators of manuscripts who are immortalized by Dante (Purg. xi. 79-83). Oderisi of Gubbio, whom Dante calls the "Honour of the art that in Paris is called alluminare," is said to have been employed by Pope Boniface VIII. to illuminate manuscripts in Rome about the time of the great Jubilee of 1300, when Dante visited Rome as an envoy from Florence.

Franco (Francesco) of Bologna is the other miniaturist mentioned by Dante as an artist of great merit; nothing is known of him or of his works. During the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries Bologna was one of the chief Italian centres for the production of manuscripts, partly on account of its being the seat of one of the oldest and most important Universities of Europe.

Fig. 47. Illumination from an Italian manuscript executed for the Countess Matilda in the twelfth century; this illustrates the extreme decadence of art in Italy before the thirteenth century.

One of the finest manuscripts of the Florentine school, executed by an unknown miniatore of the school of Giotto, is a Missal in the Chapter library of the Canons of Saint Peter's in Rome. The arms of the donor, repeated several times among the floreated borders, show that the manuscript was illuminated for Giotto's patron Cardinal Gaetano Stefaneschi, probably between 1330 and 1340. The same volume contains, by the same illuminator's hand, a richly illuminated Life of Saint George, with large historiated capitals of great beauty and finely decorative colouring. Fig. 48 shows one of the initials with Saint George slaying the dragon, and the Princess Saba kneeling at the side.

In some cases, especially during the fourteenth century, skilful Italian illuminators appear to have worked in France. Many French and even Flemish manuscripts, such as some of those executed for Philip of Burgundy and the Duc de Berri towards the end of the century, show distinctly two styles of painting, French and Italian, the book evidently being the work of two different artists. Some of these Italian paintings in French manuscripts suggest the hand of a disciple of Simone Martini (Memmi), or some artist of the very decorative Sienese school; this was probably in many cases due to the introduction of Italian painters into Avignon when the Papal court was resident there; see page 140.

It was, however, not till nearly the middle of the fourteenth century that Italy produced many illuminated manuscripts of any remarkable beauty. Those executed under the immediate influence of Giotto, between 1300 and about 1340, were not as a rule to be compared to the illuminations of northern Europe either for decorative value or for minute beauty of detail.

By the middle of the fourteenth century, however, the illuminator's art in Italy, and especially in Florence, had reached a very high degree of excellence.



Vasari, in his life of Don Lorenzo Monaco, mentions a Camaldolese monk of the Monastery of Santa Maria degli Angeli near Florence, who, about the year 1350, wrote and illuminated a number of magnificent choir-books for his monastery, which were very highly valued; so much so that after the death of the monk, whose name was Don Silvestro, his hand was preserved in a shrine as a sacred relic of the dead monk's piety and skill. Some of Don Silvestro's manuscripts are now preserved in the Laurentian library in Florence, and a number of miniatures cut out of his choir-books were acquired by W. Young Ottley.

The existing works of Don Silvestro show that the enthusiasm of his fellow monks was not exaggerated. The miniatures are noble in style, finished with the most exquisitely minute touch, splendidly brilliant in colour, and in every way masterpieces of the illuminator's art. These choir-books are of enormous size, being intended to be placed on the central choir lectern so that the whole body of monks standing round could chant the antiphonalia from the same book, and the initials are proportionately large to the size of the page. Thus some of the figures of Saints which fill the central spaces of the large initials are as much as from six to seven inches in height, and yet they are painted with the minute detail of an ordinary sized miniature. The grounds of these splendid figures are usually of burnished gold, decorated by incised tooling of diapers or scroll-work; and the floreated borders, which surround the letters and form marginal ornaments to the pages, consist of nobly designed conventional foliage in vermilion, ultramarine and other fine pigments, relieved and lighted up by bosses of burnished gold thickly sprinkled among the sumptuous coloured foliage. Tooled and burnished gold is also used largely for the decoration of the dresses of the figures, their crowns, jewelled ornaments and the apparels and orphreys of their vestments. The whole effect is magnificent in the extreme, and yet, in spite of the dazzling brilliance of the gold and colours, the whole effect is perfectly harmonious and free from the harsh gaudiness which disfigures so much of the late fifteenth century work of the French and Flemish manuscript painters.

The special style of ornament used by Don Silvestro survived in Italian illumination for nearly a century and a half. In Italy realistic forms of fruit and flowers, such as were painted with such taste and skill by the northern miniaturists, were scarcely ever used. All through the fifteenth century, alike in the manuscripts of the Florentine, Sienese and Venetian schools, the same purely conventional forms of foliage were used, with great curling leaves, alternately blue and red, lighted up by the jewel-like studs and bosses of burnished gold.

According to Vasari, the same Camaldolese Monastery produced another manuscript illuminator whose skill was hardly inferior to that of Don Silvestro. This was Don Lorenzo, who appears to have been born about 1370, and to have died about 1425. Examples of his skill, also in the form of large choir-books, are preserved in the Laurentian library at Florence; they are rich with miniatures of great beauty, and, like Don Silvestro's paintings, show a lavish expenditure of time and patience in the exquisite minuteness with which they are finished. Vasari tells us that his hand also was preserved as a sacred relic in the treasury of Santa Maria degli Angeli.

In later times Pope Leo X., who, like other members of the Medici family, was an enthusiastic lover of illuminated manuscripts, when on a visit to the Monastery, desired to carry away to the Basilica of Saint Peter in Rome some of these choir-books by the hand of Don Lorenzo.

The Dominican Convent of San Marco in Florence, where the famous Florentine painter Fra Beato Angelico was a Friar, possesses, or till quite recently did possess, a magnificent collection of choir-books richly illuminated with miniatures by various members of the Convent. Some of these are said to have been painted by Fra Angelico himself, others by a brother of his who was a Friar in the same Convent.

The records of the Dominican Convent at Fiesole, where Fra Angelico was born, show that he was working there as a painter of illuminated manuscripts in the year 1407 and for some time subsequently.

It is noticeable that Fra Angelico's style, even when painting a colossal mural fresco, was essentially that of the manuscript illuminator. He is utterly unrealistic in drawing and still more so in colour; he deals with no possible effects of light and shade, but paints all his figures glowing with the most brilliant effects of gold and colour, in a style far earlier than that of his own date, and with certain technical peculiarities which, as a rule, are to be found only in the illuminations of manuscripts.

In the fifteenth century the manuscript art of central and northern Italy, especially Siena, Florence, Venice and Milan, rose to a pitch of beauty and perfection which left it quite without rival in any country in the world. As was the case in writing of the glories of such manuscripts as the French Apocalypses of the fourteenth century, words are inadequate to describe the refined beauty of the best Italian manuscripts of this period. As has been already pointed out Italy was late in beginning her artistic Renaissance; and now, just when the rest of Europe was sinking into a more or less rapid and complete state of decadence, Italy blossomed out into one of the most magnificent artistic periods that the world has ever seen. The manuscripts of this period are not unworthy of the general artistic glories of the time, and in some cases their technical qualities bear witness to an almost superhuman amount of dexterity and patience.

During the first half of the century, by far the greater proportion of the manuscripts written in Italy were for ecclesiastical purposes. Among the most magnificent, but at the same time also the rarest, are folio manuscript Pontificals, executed for wealthy ecclesiastics of Episcopal rank.

An Italian folio Pontifical, dating from early in the fifteenth century, in the library of the Fitzwilliam Museum, is of its kind, one of the most beautiful manuscripts in the world. The delicacy of execution of the figures and especially the faces is little short of miraculous, and the numerous historiated initials, each representing some episcopal act of Consecration or Benediction, scattered thickly all through the volume, are a remarkable proof of the patient, unwearied skill which through years of labour must have been devoted to this one superb volume.

Among the illuminated manuscripts with secular texts the most important are copies of Dante's Divine Comedy, the works of Boccaccio and the Poems of Petrarch. The first page of such works as these is usually richly decorated with a wide border of scroll foliage, studded with the usual gold bosses. Frequently small miniatures in medallion frames are set at intervals among the conventional leafage; and at the bottom is a shield to receive the owner's coat of arms, surrounded with a delicately painted leafy wreath, which is supported on each side by a graceful figure of a flying angel or Cupid. In many cases the shield is still left blank; the book not having been written for any special purchaser and the owner having neglected to insert his arms.

The painting of the wreath which surrounds the shield is usually very beautiful, and the two flying angels or amorini are models of grace. This motive of the wreath held by two flying figures was largely used by the Florentine sculptors of the fifteenth century, such as Ghiberti and Luca della Robbia; it was suggested by the similar design, of very inferior execution, which occurs on so many ancient Roman sarcophagi.

Some of the most elaborate Italian manuscripts of the second half of the fifteenth century are decorated with very minutely and cleverly painted copies of antique classical gems, cameos, coins and medals, or reliefs in marble and bronze. Wonderful skill is often shown by the way in which the illuminator has given the appearance of relief and the actual texture of the metal or stone. Beautiful as the borders of this class are, they belong to a period of decadence of taste, though not of skill, and they paved the way for the elaborate futilities of Giulio Clovio and other miniaturists of the sixteenth century period of decadence.

The influx of Greek exiles into Florence, after the conquest of Constantinople by the Ottoman Turks in 1453, led to the famous revival of classical learning, and for a while made Florence not only the artistic but the intellectual centre of the world. Many of these fugitive Greeks brought with them both Greek and Latin manuscripts of ancient date, and a new development of manuscript art took place in consequence of this.

Though manuscripts of Service books and other sacred works continued to be written in the mediaeval "Gothic" form of character, for secular manuscripts a very beautiful kind of "Roman" hand was largely used by the scribes of Florence, Venice and other Italian centres of the illuminator's art. This newly developed mode of writing was based on the beautiful clear form of character which had been used by the most skilful northern scribes of the ninth and tenth century; and at the same time a style of illumination for borders and initials was imitated or rather adapted, with the utmost taste and skill from the characteristic interlaced patterns of England, France and Germany during the twelfth century.

This beautiful kind of ornament consists of delicately interlaced and plaited bands of white or gold, thrown into relief by filling in the background, or spaces between the laced bands, with alternating colours, blue, red and green.

This style of initial was also largely used for the early printed books of Rome, Florence and Venice, many copies of which were illuminated in the most magnificent way, quite equal to the ornaments of the finest vellum manuscripts.

Some of the Italian manuscripts of the second half of the fifteenth century, for delicate beauty and for exquisite refinement of detail, are unrivalled by the illuminated manuscripts of any other country or age.

Among the greatest marvels of human skill that have ever been produced are some of the very small Books of Hours which were executed for the merchant princes of Florence and Venice and for other wealthy Italian patrons. The borders in these frequently have minute figures of Cupid-like angels (amorini) playing among decorative foliage, or birds and animals, such as fawns, cheetahs and the like, designed with an amount of grace and modelled with a microscopic refinement of touch that no words can adequately describe.

And it is not only the unequalled beauty of the painted decorations and miniatures for which these late Italian manuscripts are so remarkable; the mere writing of the text in the most brilliant black and red ink is of striking beauty in the form of the letters and the perfect regularity of the whole. Last of all the vellum used by the Italian scribes of this period is far more beautiful, from its ivory-like perfection of tint and surface, than that of any other class of manuscripts. Though not, of course, as exquisitely thin as the uterine vellum of the Anglo-Norman thirteenth century scribes, it is more beautiful in texture, and does much to complete the artistic perfection of the manuscripts of fifteenth century Italy, by its exquisitely polished surface and perfect purity of tint.

The provinces of Florence, Pisa, Siena, Bologna and Venice, including Verona, were all important centres for the production of fine illuminated manuscripts. On the whole Florence was the most famous in this as in other branches of art, and it was especially to Florence that wealthy foreign Princes sent their commissions when they desired to possess exceptionally beautiful manuscripts.

One of the most enthusiastic art patrons of Europe, Matthias Corvinus, King of Hungary from 1458 to 1490, had a large number of most magnificent manuscripts written and illuminated for him by various miniatori of Florence; some of these are now in the Imperial library of Vienna.

So also Federigo da Montefeltro, Duke of Urbino about the same time, purchased from a Florentine that most superbly illuminated Bible, in two large folio volumes, dated 1478, which is now in the Vatican library.

Among the miniaturists who worked for King Corvinus, the most famous was a Florentine named Attavante di Gabriello, who was born in 1452. Vasari mentions him as a pupil and friend of Fra Angelico, and describes at great length and with much enthusiasm a sumptuous manuscript of Silius Italicus, belonging to the Dominican Monastery of San Giovanni e Paolo in Venice, as being the work of Attavante.

This once magnificent manuscript still exists, but in a much mutilated state, in the Venetian Biblioteca Marciana (Cl. XII. Cod. LXVIII.); all the large miniatures have been cut out, but the borders with winged Cupids, birds and animals among decorative scroll-work are marvels of beauty and minute delicacy of touch. Though quite worthy of Attavante's fame, this manuscript cannot be his work, as it was executed many years too early, in the time of Pope Nicholas V., who reigned from 1447 to 1455.

The same library does, however, possess real examples of Attavante's wonderful illuminations. The borders are specially remarkable for the minute medallion heads which are introduced among the conventional foliage. These minute pictures occur in many of the finest manuscripts of this class; and other miniatori painted them with a microscopic refinement of detail, quite equal to the best illuminations of Attavante. Fig. 49 gives a good typical example of this style of border, with two Cupid-like angels and busts of saints in quatrefoil medallions.

Some of the borders of this class, especially in Venetian and Florentine manuscripts, are decorated with very cleverly painted representations of jewels, such as the emerald and ruby, set at intervals along each margin. These are often wonderful examples of skilful realism, the transparency of the gem, and its bright reflected lights, being rendered with an almost deceptive appearance of reality.

In the fifteenth century Verona was one of the chief Italian centres for the production of magnificent manuscripts. Various members of one family, known from their occupation as "dai Libri," were specially famous as miniaturists. Stefano the eldest was born about 1420; he and his younger brother Francesco were both skilled miniaturists, and Francesco's son Girolamo dai Libri (1474 to 1556) was famous not only as a miniatore, but also as a painter of altar-pieces and other sacred pictures on a large scale.



Another Veronese painter, Liberale di Giacomo, who was born in 1451, was in his youth a very skilful miniaturist.

He spent some years in illuminating large choir-books for the Benedictine monastery of Monte Oliveto near Siena, and then after 1469 he was for long occupied in the illumination of similar choir-books for the Cathedral of Siena.

The miniatures in these great Antiphonals are most exquisitely finished, rich in fancy, brilliant in colour, but wanting decorative breadth of style. With a far greater expenditure of labour and eyesight, these wonderful illuminations are far inferior to the works of the fourteenth century French miniaturists, and show signs of that decadence of taste, which, in the sixteenth century, led to the destruction of the true illuminator's art.

In addition to Venice, Padua and Ferrara were both important centres of manuscript illumination of a very high order during the fifteenth century. The Paduan miniatures show strongly the influence of Andrea Mantegna and Gian Bellini, whose styles also appear in the contemporary manuscripts of Venice. The British Museum possesses a magnificent example of the work of one of the ablest miniatori of Padua, a Missal by Benedetto Bordone, who also illuminated the great choir-books of the Convent of Santa Justina in Padua.



Ferrara too produced many very beautiful manuscripts, especially under the patronage of Duke Borso d'Este. It was for this Duke of Ferrara that the magnificent choir-books, now in the Municipal library at Ferrara were executed.

Fig. 50 shows a miniature from a very splendid Bible, which was illuminated for Duke Borso d'Este between 1455 and 1461 by Taddeo di Crivelli and Franco di Messer Giovanni da Russi, two very talented miniaturists of the Ferrarese school, though they were natives of the neighbouring city of Mantua.

Parma, Modena and Cremona also were thriving centres of the illuminators art; in fact wherever in Italy there was a school of painting a subsidiary school of manuscript miniaturists seems also to have existed. The two classes of painting acted and reacted upon one another; and in some cases, as is indicated below, the more important art of painting on a large scale owed more to the manuscript illuminators than has commonly been acknowleged.

Milan, especially under Duke Ludovico and other members of the Sforza family, was an active centre of manuscript illumination. Some very beautiful late manuscripts exist with miniatures which show the influence of Leonardo da Vinci and his pupil Bernardino Luini; a Book of Hours in the Fitzwilliam Museum is a good example of this.

One rather exceptional class of richly illuminated manuscripts was largely produced in Italy during the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries; these were State documents, University diplomas and licences, patents of nobility and legal instruments of various kinds, often very elaborately decorated with illuminations and miniatures in gold and colours.

In Venice especially immense numbers of these were produced; the most elaborate are Appointments of Governors, Commissions of officials of rank, Patriarchal Briefs, together with State records and documents of the most varied kinds. Bologna, Padua, Pisa and others of the chief Universities of Italy issued diplomas for Doctors degrees, and licences to give lectures, which were frequently very magnificently decorated with letters of gold and richly illuminated capitals and borders.

Before passing on to the Italian miniatori of the last period, it is worth while to notice the strong influence that the art of manuscript illumination had on the painters of large retables and other sacred pictures in Italy and especially in Venice; just as was the case with the contemporary painters of Germany and Flanders. Many of the Venetian altar-pieces, from their minute detail, their use of burnished gold enriched with tooled patterns, their decorative treatment of flowers and their architectural backgrounds and framework, look exactly like a page from an illuminated manuscript.

Fig. 51 shows a characteristic example of this, a magnificent retable glowing with brilliant colours and burnished gold, now in the Accademia of Venice, which was painted in 1446 in the little island of Murano by two painters named Johannes and Antonius de Murano.

The same strongly marked influence of the decorative style of illuminated manuscripts is to be seen in nearly all the works of Carlo Crivelli, another Venetian painter of the latter part of the fifteenth century, and in the gorgeous retables of Gentile da Fabriano, a follower of Fra Angelico's richly decorative and brilliantly coloured method of painting.

Italian manuscripts of the sixteenth century. By about the end of the first decade of the sixteenth century the art of manuscript illumination had ceased in Italy to be a real living art; and, though it continued to be practised with great technical skill for more than half a century later, the art, which once had been one of the most beautiful and dignified of all branches of art, sank into the production of costly toys to please a few Popes and luxurious Princes who were willing to pay very large prices for manuscripts illuminated by the skilful hands of Giulio Clovio and other miniaturists, whose patience, eyesight and technical skill were superior to their sense of what was fitting and beautiful in an illuminated manuscript.



Of all the illuminators of this class the Dalmatian Giulio Clovio (1498-1578) was the most famous and technically the most skilful. He found many wealthy patrons in Italy and was employed by Charles V. of France.

The Soane Museum in London possesses a characteristic example of his style, a Commentary on the Epistles of Saint Paul, executed for Giulio's early patron, Cardinal Marino Grimani of Venice, the brother of the owner of the Grimani Breviary mentioned above. Clovio's miniatures are marvels of minute execution, but not truly decorative in style, and in design usually quite unsuited to their purpose. In most cases they resemble large oil paintings reduced to a microscopic scale; the figures are commonly feeble imitations either of large pieces of contemporary tapestry or else of painting in Michel Angelo's grandiose style, both of which of course were utterly unsuited for miniatures in a manuscript.

The Manuscripts in the Vatican Library. The Archives of the Vatican library contain a number of records of the development of the library during the sixteenth century and later.

In mediaeval times manuscripts were rare and costly, so that even Kings, Popes and Universities possessed libraries which in size were very insignificant compared to those of ancient Alexandria, Rome and Byzantium.

Even in Leo X.'s time (1513-1522) the Vatican library, which was probably the largest in the world, contained only 4,070 manuscripts and printed books. A century earlier, before the invention of printing, two or three hundred volumes would have constituted an enormous library.

As a rule even Royal and Public libraries were contained in a few iron-bound chests or armaria; and borrowers had to deposit a pledge—a gold ring, a silver cup or some other valuable article, which was retained by the librarian till the manuscript had been restored. In the Vatican this practice survived till the sixteenth century, and books exist among the Archives in which were recorded the date, the title of the book, the borrower's name and a short description of the deposited pledge. When the book was returned the word "restituit" was written in the margin.

The same Archives contain a number of accounts giving the sums paid to various illuminators of manuscripts, especially in the time of Pope Paul III. (Alex. Farnese, 1534 to 1553), who was a great patron of Giulio Clovio and other miniaturists. In 1540 a number of scriptores et miniatores employed in the Vatican library received as pay 4 gold ducats each monthly, of 10 Julii to the ducat, equal to about £20 in modern value.

In 1541 Messer Paolo received 30 gold ducats for writing and illuminating four volumes.

It is interesting to note that the famous painter Sebastiano del Piombo ("Fra Bastiano piombator") received payment "pro libris miniatis" in the year 1546 from Pope Paul III.

In 1549 Federigo Mario di Perugia received 4½ ducats a month for his labour "in scribendis et ornandis seu pingendis libris." This is the same miniaturist who illuminated some choir-books for the Roman Monastery of Saint' Agostino.

It was especially for the great choir-books that the art of the scribe and illuminator survived, the reason being that no printers' fount of type had characters of sufficient size to be read by a whole circle of singers. Thus we find Italian and Spanish manuscript Antiphonals and the like, which have the grand Gothic writing of the fifteenth century executed as late as the year 1620 or even later.

The Manuscripts of Spain, Portugal and the East. Little need be said about the manuscript illuminations of the Spanish peninsula since they contain little that is native or original.

In the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries many magnificent illuminations were produced in Spain and Portugal, but they are mainly imitations either of Italian or of Flemish miniatures. In earlier times in Northern Spain the influence of France was paramount, and in Southern Spain the beautiful "Saracenic" art of the Moorish conquerors influenced all branches of the fine arts, including that of manuscript illumination.

To some extent the same Moslem influence is apparent in the decorative borders of Sicilian and Venetian manuscripts, especially during the fifteenth century.

The illuminations of Oriental manuscripts do not fall within the limits of this brief treatise, but it should be noted that during the mediaeval period, and down to the present century, Persian and Arabic manuscripts with decorative illuminations of extraordinary beauty and skilful execution have been largely produced in Syria, Persia and India under the Moslem conquerors.

For delicacy of touch, for intricate beauty of ornament, and for decorative splendour in the use of gold and colour, these Oriental manuscripts are, in their own way, unsurpassed.

In the orthodox Sunni manuscripts miniatures with figure subjects do not occur, but are lavishly used in the manuscripts of the Persians and other members of the Sufi sect. The drawing of the human form is without the dignity and grace that is to be seen in Western manuscripts, but as pieces of decoration the Oriental miniatures are of high merit. Copies of the Koran, and the works of the favourite Persian poets are among the most common kinds of Oriental manuscripts. It is the latter that are so often sumptuously decorated with figure subjects.