Liber colorum secundum magistrum Bernardum

Last updated

The Liber colorum secundum magistrum Bernardum ('Book of Colours according to master Bernard') is a medieval treatise on miniature painting and book illumination. Written in a Medieval Latin interspersed with several expressions in the Italian Lombard dialect it stems from 13th century Northern Italy. The eponymous magister Bernardus (or 'master Bernard') was most likely a cleric working in a scriptorium to whom later collections also attribute further artisanal instructions not related to book painting. It is contained within four manuscripts: [1]

Contents

Content

The original corpus ascribed to 'master Bernard' himself amounts to 56 recipes. These treat:

Editions and translations

The Liber colorum was first published, based on three manuscripts, with a translation into Italian and a commentary by the Milanese conservationist Paola Travaglio in 2008, followed by a 2016 re-edition after the discovery of a fourth textual witness. In 2023 Travaglio and Thomas Reiser published a German version with an expanded commentary.

Related Research Articles

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Luca Pacioli</span> 15th c. Italian Friar Minor, mathematician and economic theorist

Luca Bartolomeo de Pacioli, O.F.M. was an Italian mathematician, Franciscan friar, collaborator with Leonardo da Vinci, and an early contributor to the field now known as accounting. He is referred to as the father of accounting and bookkeeping and he was the first person to publish a work on the double-entry system of book-keeping on the continent. He was also called Luca di Borgo after his birthplace, Borgo Sansepolcro, Tuscany.

<i>Trotula</i> Three 12th-century texts on womens medicine

Trotula is a name referring to a group of three texts on women's medicine that were composed in the southern Italian port town of Salerno in the 12th century. The name derives from a historic female figure, Trota of Salerno, a physician and medical writer who was associated with one of the three texts. However, "Trotula" came to be understood as a real person in the Middle Ages and because the so-called Trotula texts circulated widely throughout medieval Europe, from Spain to Poland, and Sicily to Ireland, "Trotula" has historic importance in "her" own right.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Agnolo Gaddi</span> Italian painter

Agnolo Gaddi (c.1350–1396) was an Italian painter. He was born and died in Florence, and was the son of the painter Taddeo Gaddi, who was himself the major pupil of the Florentine master Giotto.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Biblioteca Ambrosiana</span> Historic library in Milan, Italy

The Biblioteca Ambrosiana is a historic library in Milan, Italy, also housing the Pinacoteca Ambrosiana, the Ambrosian art gallery. Named after Ambrose, the patron saint of Milan, it was founded in 1609 by Cardinal Federico Borromeo, whose agents scoured Western Europe and even Greece and Syria for books and manuscripts. Some major acquisitions of complete libraries were the manuscripts of the Benedictine monastery of Bobbio (1606) and the library of the Paduan Vincenzo Pinelli, whose more than 800 manuscripts filled 70 cases when they were sent to Milan and included the famous Iliad, the Ilias Picta.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Rabbula Gospels</span> 6th-century illuminated Syriac Gospel Book

The Rabbula Gospels, or Rabula Gospels, is a 6th-century illuminated Syriac Gospel Book. One of the finest Byzantine works produced in West Asia, and one of the earliest Christian manuscripts with large miniatures, it is distinguished by the miniaturist's predilection for bright colours, movement, drama, and expressionism. Created during a period from which little art survived, it nevertheless saw great development in Christian iconography. The manuscript has a significant place in art history, and is very often referred to.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Cennino Cennini</span> Italian painter (c. 1360 – before 1427)

Cennino d'Andrea Cennini was an Italian painter influenced by Giotto. He was a student of Agnolo Gaddi in Florence. Gaddi trained under his father, called Taddeo Gaddi, who trained with Giotto.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Squarcialupi Codex</span>

The Squarcialupi Codex is an illuminated manuscript compiled in Florence in the early 15th century. It is the single largest primary source of music of the 14th-century Italian Trecento.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Filarete</span> Italian architect and sculptor (1400–1469)

Antonio di Pietro Aver(u)lino, known as Filarete, was a Florentine Renaissance architect, sculptor, medallist, and architectural theorist. He is perhaps best remembered for his design of the ideal city of Sforzinda, the first ideal city plan of the Renaissance.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Mosaic gold</span> Inorganic pigment used for gilding

Mosaic gold or bronze powder refers to tin(IV) sulfide as used as a pigment in bronzing and gilding wood and metal work. It is obtained as a yellow scaly crystalline powder. The alchemists referred to it as aurum musivum, or aurum mosaicum. The term mosaic gold has also been used to refer to ormolu and to cut shapes of gold leaf, some darkened for contrast, arranged as a mosaic. The term bronze powder may also refer to powdered bronze alloy.

The Book of Squares, (Liber Quadratorum in the original Latin) is a book on algebra by Leonardo Fibonacci, published in 1225. It was dedicated to Frederick II, Holy Roman Emperor.

After being brought to Pisa by Master Dominick to the feet of your celestial majesty, most glorious prince, Lord F.,

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Secundinus</span>

Secundinus, or Sechnall as he was known in Irish, was founder and patron saint of Domhnach Sechnaill, County Meath, who went down in medieval tradition as a disciple of St Patrick and one of the first bishops of Armagh. Historians have suggested, however, that the connection with St Patrick was a later tradition invented by Armagh historians in favour of their patron saint and that Secundinus is more likely to have been a separate missionary, possibly a companion of Palladius.

Petrus Bonus was a late medieval alchemist. He is best known for his Precious Pearl or Precious New Pearl, an influential alchemical text composed sometime between 1330 and 1339. He was said to have been a physician at Ferrara in Italy, causing him to sometimes be known as Petrus Bonus of Ferrara or as Petrus Bonus the Lombard. An Introduction to the Divine Art is also attributed to him but was printed much later, in 1572.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Bernardo Cennini</span>

Bernardo Cennini was an Italian goldsmith, sculptor and early printer of Florence. As a sculptor he was among the assistants to Lorenzo Ghiberti in the long project producing the second pair of doors—the Doors of Paradise—for the Battistero di San Giovanni. He produced the first book printed at Florence. The painter and author of a famous book on the crafts, Cennino d'Andrea Cennini, was a member of the same Florentine family.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Biblioteca Riccardiana</span> Italian public library

The Biblioteca Riccardiana is an Italian public library under the aegis of the Ministry of Culture, located inside the Palazzo Medici Riccardi at 10 Via de’ Ginori in Florence, in the neighborhood comprising the Mercato Centrale and the Basilica di San Lorenzo. Its main feature is preserving books collected by members of the Riccardi family and making them available in the very same rooms that were originally dedicated to that purpose. So, still today the library boasts the magnificent bookshelves, neatly carved and gilded, that create the atmosphere of a late-seventeenth-century patrician library, whose main features have all been kept intact.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Biblioteca Comunale degli Intronati</span>

The Biblioteca Comunale degli Intronati is the public library located at Via della Sapienza #3 of the comune of Siena, in Tuscany, Italy.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Francesco di Antonio del Chierico</span> Italian painter

Francesco di Antonio del Chierico (1433–1484) was a manuscript illuminator of the early Renaissance period in Florence. Francesco began as a goldsmith before changing occupations to become a successful illustrator. He was one of the pupils of Fra Angelico and became famous for being Lorenzo de' Medici's favorite illuminator. He worked under some of the most prestigious patrons of the time, including Lorenzo de' Medici, Piero de’ Cosimo de' Medici, Cosimo il Vecchio, and Vespasiano da Bisticci. He gained a reputation for his well executed illustrations in varying types of books ranging in size from small books of hours to large choir books. His illustrations often included intricate floral arrangements, putti, and candelabras. He decorated both the borders of manuscripts and full pages.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Giovanni Colonna (historian)</span>

Fra Giovanni Colonna (1298? – 1343/44) was an Italian Dominican friar and scholar. Educated in France, he served as a preacher and vicar in Rome, chaplain in Cyprus and lector in Tivoli. He lived and worked in Avignon for a time and traveled widely in the Near East during his Cypriot period.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Paolino Veneto</span>

Paolino Veneto was an Italian Franciscan inquisitor, diplomat and historian. He served as an ambassador for the Republic of Venice and the Papacy. From 1324 until his death, he was the bishop of Pozzuoli. He simultaneously served as a member of the royal council of King Robert of Naples. He wrote three universal chronicles in Latin–the Epithoma, Compendium and Satirica–and a mirror for princes in Venetian.

Giovanni da Nono was a Paduan judge and writer.

Thomas Reiser is a German philologist and translator. His contributions range from Baroque alchemy to comedies and art technological treatises of classical antiquity as well as of the Italian Renaissance. In 2014 he saw to the first German translation of Francesco Colonna’s Hypnerotomachia Poliphili.

References

  1. Cf. Travaglio 2008, pp. 2-5, 13-17; Travaglio 2016, pp. 149-153, 164-167; Travaglio/Reiser 2023, pp. 7-11.
  2. Cf. Travaglio/Reiser 2023. p. 34f.
  3. Cf. Mary Virginia Orna, Manfred J. D. Low, Maureen M. Julian, Synthetic Blue Pigments, Ninth to Sixteenth Centuries, II. ‘Silver Blue’, in: Studies in Conservation 30/4 (1985), pp. 155-160; ad loc. Travaglio 2016, p. 161; Travaglio/Reiser 2023, p. 40.
  4. Cf. Travaglio 2016, pp. 179 and 185; Travaglio/Reiser 2023. p. 43; section 172 in most editions of Cennini.