History
The manuscript contains in its first historiated initial two characters, a knight and a lady kneeling in prayer before the Trinity and bearing the arms of two sponsors of the manuscript: Edward, Prince of Wales and future Edward I of England, and his wife, Eleanor of Castile. The work was carried out in successive stages between 1254, the date of their marriage, and 1272, when the prince acceded to the throne. [2] On stylistic and other grounds a more precise date of between 1265 and 1270 has been proposed. [3] The manuscript was made in Westminster, [4] or perhaps Canterbury. [5] No later owner is identified until the 19th century, when it was put up for sale at Christie's by William Wilson in 1833. It was acquired the same year by Francis Douce, who left his collection to the Bodleian Library at the University of Oxford on his death in 1834. [6]
Books of hours are Christian prayer books, which were used to pray the canonical hours. The use of a book of hours was especially popular in the Middle Ages, and as a result, they are the most common type of surviving medieval illuminated manuscript. Like every manuscript, each manuscript book of hours is unique in one way or another, but most contain a similar collection of texts, prayers and psalms, often with appropriate decorations, for Christian devotion. Illumination or decoration is minimal in many examples, often restricted to decorated capital letters at the start of psalms and other prayers, but books made for wealthy patrons may be extremely lavish, with full-page miniatures. These illustrations would combine picturesque scenes of country life with sacred images.
Illustrated Apocalypse manuscripts are manuscripts that contain the text of Revelation or a commentary on Revelation and also illustrations. Most of these Apocalypses were written between 1250 and 1400. The English Apocalypses are part of a larger group of Apocalypses called: the Anglo-Norman Apocalypses.
The Morgan Beatus is an illuminated manuscript with miniatures by the artist Magius of the Commentary on the Book of the Apocalypse by the eighth-century Spanish monk Beatus, which described the end of days and the Last Judgment. The manuscript is believed to have been produced in and around the scriptorium of the Monastery of San Miguel de Escalada in Spain.
The Paris Psalter is a Byzantine illuminated manuscript, 38 x 26.5 cm in size, containing 449 folios and 14 full-page miniatures. The Paris Psalter is considered a key monument of the so-called Macedonian Renaissance, a 10th-century renewal of interest in classical art closely identified with the emperor Constantine VII Porphyrogenitus (909–959) and his immediate successors.
The Fécamp Bible is an illuminated Latin Bible. It was produced in Paris during the third quarter of the 13th century, and had previously belonged in the collection of Henry Yates Thompson.
De Arte Venandi cum Avibus is a Latin treatise on ornithology and falconry written in the 1240s by the Holy Roman Emperor Frederick II. One of the surviving manuscripts is dedicated to his son Manfred. Manuscripts of De arte venandi cum avibus exist in a two-book version and in a six-book version.
William de Brailes was an English Early Gothic manuscript illuminator, presumably born in Brailes, Warwickshire. He signed two manuscripts, and apparently worked in Oxford, where he is documented from 1238 to 1252, owning property in Catte Street near the University Church of St Mary the Virgin, roughly on the site now occupied by the chapel of All Souls College, where various members of the book trade lived. He was married, to Celena, but evidently also held minor orders, as at least three self-portraits show him with a clerical tonsure. This was not unusual: by this date, and with the exception of the St Albans monk Matthew Paris, the only other English illuminator of the period about whom we have significant personal information, most English illumination seems to have been done in commercial workshops run by laymen.
The Commentary on the Apocalypse is a Latin commentary on the biblical Book of Revelation written around 776 by the Spanish monk and theologian Beatus of Liébana. The surviving texts differ somewhat, and the work is mainly famous for the spectacular illustrations in a group of illustrated manuscripts, mostly produced on the Iberian Peninsula over the following five centuries. There are 29 surviving illustrated manuscripts dating from the 9th to the 13th centuries, as well as other unillustrated and later manuscripts. Significant copies include the Morgan, Saint-Sever, Gerona, Osma, Madrid, and Tábara Beatus codices.
Two lavishly illustrated illuminated manuscript psalters are known as the Psalter of Saint Louis as they belonged to the canonized King Louis IX of France. They are now in Paris and Leiden, and are respectively good examples of French Gothic and English Romanesque illumination.
The Talbot Shrewsbury Book is a very large richly-illuminated manuscript made in Rouen (Normandy) in 1444/5. It was presented by John Talbot, 1st Earl of Shrewsbury to the French princess, Margaret of Anjou, in honour of her betrothal to King Henry VI. It contains a unique collection of fifteen texts in French, including chansons de geste, chivalric romances, treatises on warfare and chivalry, and finally the Statutes of the Order of the Garter. The work is an excellent example of book production in Rouen in the mid-fifteenth century and provides a rare insight into the political views of the English military leader and close confidant of the crown, John Talbot.
The Manuscrit du Roi or Chansonnier du Roi is a prominent songbook compiled towards the middle of the thirteenth century, probably between 1255 and 1260 and a major testimony of European medieval music. It is currently French manuscript no.844 of the Bibliothèque nationale de France. It is known by various sigla, depending on which of its contents are the focus of study: it is troubadour manuscript W, trouvère manuscript M, and motet manuscript R. It was first published by French musicologist Pierre Aubry in 1907.
The Cloisters Apocalypse, MS 68.174 is a French illuminated manuscript dated c. 1330, now in The Cloisters in New York. There are 40 folios, that is to say, 80 pages. The page size is 12 1/8 × 9 1/16 in.. There is a high level of illustration, with 72 half or full-page miniatures, as well as coats of arms and decorated initials in red & blue.
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