The codex was the historical ancestor format of the modern book. Technically the vast majority of modern books use the codex format of a stack of pages bound at one edge, along the side of the text. But the term "codex" is now reserved for older manuscript books, which mostly used sheets of vellum, parchment, or papyrus, rather than paper.
A manuscript was, traditionally, any document written by hand or typewritten, as opposed to mechanically printed or reproduced in some indirect or automated way. More recently, the term has come to be understood to further include any written, typed, or word-processed copy of an author's work, as distinguished from the rendition as a printed version of the same.
An illuminated manuscript is a formally prepared document where the text is decorated with flourishes such as borders and miniature illustrations. Often used in the Roman Catholic Church for prayers and liturgical books such as psalters and courtly literature, the practice continued into secular texts from the 13th century onward and typically include proclamations, enrolled bills, laws, charters, inventories, and deeds.
The Limbourg brothers were Dutch miniature painters from the city of Nijmegen. They were active in the early 15th century in France and Burgundy, working in the International Gothic style.
The Très Riches Heures du Duc de Berry, or Très Riches Heures, is an illuminated manuscript that was created between c. 1412 and 1416. It is a book of hours, which is a Christian devotional book and a collection of prayers said at canonical hours. The manuscript was created for John, Duke of Berry, the brother of King Charles V of France, by Limbourg brothers Paul, Johan and Herman. The book is now MS 65 in the Musée Condé, Chantilly, France.
The St Augustine Gospels is an illuminated Gospel Book which dates from the 6th century and has been in the Parker Library in Corpus Christi College, Cambridge since 1575. It was made in Italy and has been in England since fairly soon after its creation; by the 16th century it had probably already been at Canterbury for almost a thousand years. It has 265 leaves measuring about 252 x 196 mm, and is not entirely complete, in particular missing pages with miniatures.
The Ambrosian Iliad or Ilias Picta is a 5th-century illuminated manuscript on vellum, which depicts the entirety of Homer's Iliad, including battle scenes and noble scenes. It is considered unique due to being the only set of ancient illustrations that depict scenes from the Iliad. The Ambrosian Iliad consists of 52 miniatures, each labeled numerically. It is thought to have been created in Alexandria, given the flattened and angular Hellenistic figures, which are considered typical of Alexandrian art in late antiquity, in approximately 500 AD, possibly by multiple artists. The author(s) first drew the figures nude and then painted the clothes on, much like in Greek vase painting. In the 11th century, the miniatures were cut out of the original manuscript and pasted into a Siculo-Calabrian codex of Homeric texts.
Romanesque art is the art of Europe from approximately 1000 AD to the rise of the Gothic style in the 12th century, or later depending on region. The preceding period is known as the Pre-Romanesque period. The term was invented by 19th-century art historians, especially for Romanesque architecture, which retained many basic features of Roman architectural style – most notably round-headed arches, but also barrel vaults, apses, and acanthus-leaf decoration – but had also developed many very different characteristics. In Southern France, Spain, and Italy there was an architectural continuity with the Late Antique, but the Romanesque style was the first style to spread across the whole of Catholic Europe, from Sicily to Scandinavia. Romanesque art was also greatly influenced by Byzantine art, especially in painting, and by the anti-classical energy of the decoration of the Insular art of the British Isles. From these elements was forged a highly innovative and coherent style.
The Parker Library is a library within Corpus Christi College, Cambridge which contains rare books and manuscripts. It is known throughout the world due to its invaluable collection of over 600 manuscripts, particularly medieval texts, the majority of which were bequeathed to the college by Archbishop of Canterbury Matthew Parker, a former Master of Corpus Christi College.
Master Hugo was a Romanesque lay artist and the earliest recorded professional artist in England.
The conservation and restoration of illuminated manuscripts is the care and treatment of illuminated manuscripts which have cultural and historical significance so that they may be viewed, read, and studied now and in the future. It is a specialty case of the conservation and restoration of parchment within the field of conservation and restoration of books, manuscripts, documents and ephemera.
The Winchester Bible is a Romanesque illuminated manuscript produced in Winchester between 1150 and 1175. With folios measuring 583 x 396 mm., it is the largest surviving 12th-century English Bible. The Bible belongs to a group of large-sized Bibles that were made for religious houses all over England and the continent during the 12th century. The Bible is on permanent display in Winchester Cathedral's Kings & Scribes exhibition.
The Bible moralisée, also known as the "Bible Historiée", the "Bible Allégorisée" and sometimes "Emblémes Bibliques", is a later name for the most important examples of the medieval picture bibles, called in general "biblia pauperum", to have survived. They are heavily illustrated, and extremely expensive, illuminated manuscripts of the thirteenth century, and from the copies that still survive it is clear that they existed in at least two versions with different contents. They were similar in the choice and order of the Biblical texts selected, but differed in the allegorical and moral deductions drawn from these passages.
The Hours of Mary of Burgundy is a book of hours, a form of devotional book for lay-people, completed in Flanders around 1477, and now in the National Library of Austria. It was probably commissioned for Mary, the ruler of the Burgundian Netherlands and then the wealthiest woman in Europe. No records survive as to its commission. The book contains 187 folios, each measuring 225 by 150 millimetres. It consists of the Roman Liturgy of the Hours, 24 calendar roundels, 20 full-page miniatures and 16 quarter-page format illustrations. Its production began c. 1470, and includes miniatures by several artists, of which the foremost was the unidentified but influential illuminator known as the Master of Mary of Burgundy, who provides the book with its most meticulously detailed illustrations and borders. Other miniatures, considered of an older tradition, were contributed by Simon Marmion, Willem Vrelant and Lieven van Lathem. The majority of the calligraphy is attributed to Nicolas Spierinc, with whom the Master collaborated on other works and who may also have provided a number of illustrations.
The Hours of Giangaleazzo Visconti is a Roman-liturgy, illuminated Book of Hours in Latin, which was commissioned by the ruler of Milan, Gian Galeazzo Visconti, in Italy in the late 14th century. A Book of Hours is a personal prayer book that contained, in part, the Hours of the Virgin, a daily devotional that was popular at the time. This particular Book of Hours was created by two master illuminators, beginning with Giovannino dei Grassi before his death, and completed by Luchino Belbello da Pavia.
In architecture and the decorative arts, a rinceau is a decorative form consisting of a continuous wavy stemlike motif from which smaller leafy stems or groups of leaves branch out at more or less regular intervals. The English term scroll is more often used in English, especially when the pattern is regular, repeating along a narrow zone. In English "rinceau" tends to be used where the design spreads across a wider zone, in a similar style to an Islamic arabesque pattern.
The Spinola Hours is a illuminated manuscript book of hours of about 1510-1520, consisting of 312 folios, over 80 of which are mainly decorated with miniature paintings. It was produced between Bruges and Ghent in Flanders around 1510-1520, and is a key work of the Ghent–Bruges school of illuminators. According to Thomas Kren, a former curator of the J. Paul Getty Museum, the miniatures within the Spinola Hours can be attributed to five distinct sources. Forty-seven of these illuminated pages can be attributed to the 'Master of James IV'. Since 1883 it has been in the J. Paul Getty Museum in Malibu, catalogued as Ms. Ludwig IX 18 (83.ML.114).
Elizabeth Parker McLachlan is an American photographer, professor, writer and editor. She specialises in the Bury Bible, and the depiction of liturgical vessels such as censers, and the myrophores (Myrrhbearers) in medieval manuscript art. She is a professor emerita of art history at Rutgers University, New Jersey, USA.
Gold ground or gold-ground (adjective) is a term in art history for a style of images with all or most of the background in a solid gold colour. Historically, real gold leaf has normally been used, giving a luxurious appearance. The style has been used in several periods and places, but is especially associated with Byzantine and medieval art in mosaic, illuminated manuscripts and panel paintings, where it was for many centuries the dominant style for some types of images, such as icons. For three-dimensional objects, the term is gilded or gold-plated.
The Anjou Bible, or Bible Angevine, is an illustrated manuscript created c. 1340 in the court of King Robert I of Naples and Sicily. The Bible consists of 344 folios with two full-page illustrations and over 80 small miniatures, dated initials, and marginal miniatures. The work is considered a masterpiece of 14th-century Italian literature.
