Illuminated manuscript borders11/23/2023 ![]() But it proved a poor substitute for the tactile pleasure I imagined holding such a manuscript in my hand would bring. My research for the novel wouldn’t have been possible without it. All it takes is a few clicks to peruse images from the Iranian astonomer Al-Ṣūfī’s revision of Ptolemy’s star catalogue, incorporating Arabic folk traditions or locate the one of Christine de Pizan presenting her book to the Queen in Harley 4431 that had captivated me years ago.įor me, digitization has been both a boon and a disappointment. Anyone with access to a computer can visit the British Library or the Bibliotheque Nationale or the Morgan Library, among the more than 300 digital libraries around the world housing digitized manuscripts, conveniently mapped on a crowdsourced web site. A shimmering revenant, a tempting slice of time I would never be permitted to touch.ĭigitization made many of these artistic medieval masterpieces available online. Occasionally one might be brought out for display in a dimly lit case and opened to a single, tantalizing page, like the gilded, gaudy beauty from The Queen’s Book I spotted a decade ago in an exhibition and have been haunted by ever since. The majority have been hidden away in private collections or behind the locked doors of a museum’s climate-controlled vault. More than a million medieval manuscripts have survived centuries of time and shifts of ownership. For your purposes, the digital facsimile is adequate. Like Verity, the obsessed character in the novel, I made a valiant effort to access the original. Known as The Queen’s Book, this exquisitely decorated manuscript is a prized possession in the British Library’s collection, a book only the most prominent paleographers and book historians are permitted to handle. In the course of writing my novel Cities of Women, which follows a modern woman obsessed with the medieval manuscripts of Christine de Pizan, I spent hours scrolling through the digitized pages of Harley 4431, the compilation of writing de Pizan assembled in the early fifteenth century as a gift to Isabeau of Bavaria, regent to the French king, Charles VI. Reassembled, stitched together to bands attached horizontally to the spine and threaded onto boards, then wrapped in leather. Stacks of folios accumulate, are divided amongst artists for decoration. A knife in one hand to steady the vellum, and a quill in the other, the writing begins. A polishing rub, a ruling of the sheet, a marking off of boxes for illuminated puzzle initials or decorated miniatures. Iron-gall ink fashioned from crushed oak gall nuts and ferrous sulphate, gum arabic for thickening. Taken from Psalm 50, the text reads: Domine labia mea aperies et os meus anutiabit laudem tuam (Lord, you will open my lips, and my mouth will declare your praise).Before the word, was flesh-an animal’s skin, scraped and stretched to form the vellum, a writing surface for a scribe to scratch text with quill. Facing this page, the Virgin and Child embrace within a historiated initial D, flanked by the first prayers of the day, in Latin. Flowers, peacocks, and trees crowd the border, interspersed with Renaissance heraldic symbols and the personal mottoes of the book’s owner. ![]() The miniature on the left-hand page shows the Angel Gabriel and the Virgin Mary surrounded by naturalistic elements. ![]() Illuminated largely by Italian artist Taddeo Crivelli, these two pages in particular demonstrate superb examples of miniature and border illumination, complete with a historiated initial (a letter containing identifiable narrative scenes or figures). Though sumptuously decorated with incredible detail, the book is only about four-inches tall. See more pages of the Gualenghi-d’Este Hours.One magnificent manuscript in the Getty’s collection is the Gualenghi-d’Este Hours, seen above. The Annunciation to the Virgin, Gualenghi-d’Este Hours, Taddeo Crivelli, circa 1470, Ferrara (The J.
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