In poetic beauty, however, they cannot be compared to the glory of the French Apocalypses such as that in the library of Trinity College, Cambridge.
Gérard David is mentioned above as one of the illuminators of the famous Grimani Breviary; see page 165.
That is, for noting or writing the plain song of certain parts of the service which were sung at Christmas and during Holy Week. This explanation I owe to my friend Mr J. T. Micklethwaite.
Evidently mis-spelt for psalterio; and again in the next item.
The quaternion was a gathering of four sheets of vellum, each folded once; thus forming sixteen pages.
This book was partly written on sheets of vellum which were in stauro (in stock), and therefore do not come into the accounts.
Twelve quires of vellum which were in stock were also used for this Antiphonale.
See Trans. Bristol and Glouces. Arch. Soc. Vol. XV. 1891, pp. 257 and 260.
See Peignot, Essai sur l'histoire du parchemin et du vélin, Paris, 1812.
Strictly speaking the word vellum should denote parchment made from calfskin, but the word is commonly used for any of the finer qualities of parchment which were used for manuscripts.
Quoted by Hook, Lives of Archbishops of Canterbury, Vol. III. p. 353; the Rev. Canon G. F. Browne kindly called my attention to this passage. Other examples of the cost of vellum are given in the preceding chapter.
The same arrangement is to be seen in books printed on vellum.
For example, the mere vellum required to print a small thick folio, such as Caxton's Golden Legend, would now cost about £40.
I owe many of the facts in the following account of early paper to the excellent article on that subject in the Encyclopædia Britannica, ninth edition, Vol. XVIII. by Mr E. Maunde Thompson. See also E. Egger, Le papier dans l'antiquité et dans les temps modernes, Paris, 1866.
A good illustrated account of early water-marks is given by Sotheby, Principia Typographia, London, 1858.
Some fifteenth century paper has a special maker's mark, but more usually a general town or district mark was used, such as the cross-keys, a Cardinal's hat, an Imperial crown or double-eagle.
What is now called "foolscap paper" originally took its name from a paper-mark in the form of a fool's cap and bells, a device which was frequently used in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries.
Some of Caxton's books, printed in Westminster, bear many different paper-marks of Germany and Flanders, even in the same volume.
Paper was also made at an early date in Constantinople, through its intimate relationship with the East. Hence the Monk Theophilus, writing in the eleventh century, calls linen-paper "Greek vellum," pergamena Graeca; see I. 24.
This old paper is almost as stout, tough and durable as parchment—very unlike modern machine-made paper.
The size was made by boiling down shreds of vellum. Blotting-paper is paper that has not been sized. A coarse grey variety was used as early as the fifteenth century, though, as a rule, fine sand was used for this purpose till about the middle of the present century, especially on the Continent.
Modern "shell gold" is practically the same thing as the fluid gold of the mediaeval illuminators, except that it is not made with the pure, unalloyed metal.
The following are the most useful and easily accessible books on the technical processes of the illuminator; Theophilus, Schedula diversarum Artium, Hendrie's edition with a translation, London, 1847; Cennino Cennini, Trattato della pittura, 1437, edited, with a translation, by Mrs Merrifield, London, 1844; and a large and valuable collection of early manuscripts on the same subject, edited and translated by Mrs Merrifield under the title of Original Treatises on the Arts of Painting, 2 Vols., London, 1849.
That is to say, it looks as if the whole substance, mordant and all, were one solid mass of gold, nearly as thick as a modern half-sovereign; see Theophilus, I. 24 and 25.
So when William Torell was about to gild the bronze effigy of Queen Eleanor in Westminster Abbey he procured a large number of gold florins from Lucca.
Not even the smallest admixture of alloy was permitted in the gold coinages of the Middle Ages. Dante (Inf. XXX. 73) mentions the coiner Maestro Adamo who had been burnt at Romena in 1280 for issuing florins which had scarcely more alloy than a modern sovereign.
The gold penny of Henry III. and the florin and its parts of Edward III. were only struck as patterns. The gold noble was first issued in 1341; its value was 6s. 8d. or half a mark. So many nobles were destroyed to make gold leaf for illuminating, and for other purposes, that an Act was passed prohibiting, under severe penalties, the use of the gold coinage for any except monetary purposes.
In the same way the gold leaf used by the Greeks was comparatively thick. The famous Erechtheum inscription of 404 B.C. gives one drachma as the cost of each leaf (πέταλον) used for gilding the marble enrichments; see Cor. Ins. Att. I. 324, fragment C, col. ii. lines 35 and 42. Eighteen-pence will now buy 100 leaves of gold.
The best account of the way to make the mordant was given about 1398 by a Lombard illuminator called Johannes Archerius; see Mrs Merrifield's interesting collection of Treatises on Painting, Vol. I. page 259 seq.
See Theophilus, I. 25.
See Mrs Merrifield, op. cit. Vol. I. p. 154.
In Cennino's time, the early part of the fourteenth century, in Europe, sugar was sold by the ounce as a costly drug. Apothecaries, not grocers, dealt in it. In Persia, Syria and some other Moslem countries cane sugar was made and used in comparatively large quantities throughout the mediaeval period; but in Europe it did not come into use as an article of food till the 16th century, and even then it was very expensive.
The date of this receipt is about 1410; it is quoted in Jehan de Begue's manuscript published by Mrs Merrifield, Vol. I. pp. 9, 95, and 154; see also Theophilus, I. 31, who speaks of burnishing fluid gold laid on a mordant of red lead and cinnabar.
See Theophilus, I. 33 and 34; he recommends white of egg as a medium for ceruse, minium and carmine, and for most other pigments, ordinary vellum size.
Jehan le Begue's manuscript gives the same advice as to the use of white of egg, but advises the use of gum Arabic with other pigments; see § 197.
The British Museum possesses an interesting manuscript on pigments, entitled De coloribus Illuminatorum (Sloane manuscripts, 1754); see also Eraclius, De artibus Romanorum, published by Raspe, London, 1783 and 1801; and the twelfth century Mappae Clavicula printed in Archæologia, Vol. XXXII. pp. 183 to 244. The first book of Theophilus, Diversarum artium schedula, written in the eleventh century, contains much interesting matter on this subject; see also the works mentioned above at page 230.
The Journal of the Society of Arts, Dec. 25, 1891, and Jan. 8 and 15, 1892, has a valuable series of papers on "The pigments and vehicles of the Old Masters" by Mr A. P. Laurie, who throws new light on the treatises edited by Mrs Merrifield with the help of his own chemical investigations.
This word is spelt in many different ways.
In mediaeval times this was done by first embedding the powdered stone in a lump of wax and resin, from which the blue particles were laboriously extracted by long-continued kneading and washing. The theory of this apparently was that the wax held the colourless particles and allowed the blue to be washed out; see Mrs Merrifield, Treatises on Painting, Vol. I. pp. 49, and 97 to 111.
The modern value of ultramarine is about equal to its weight in gold. Sir Peter Lely, in the time of Charles II., paid £4. 10s. an ounce for it.
The Prior in question was the Superior of the Convent of the Frati Gesuati in Florence.
The German blue was also liable to turn to a bright emerald green if exposed to damp air. This change has taken place in a great part of the painted ceilings of the Villa Madama, which Raphael designed for Cardinal de' Medici (afterwards Clement VII.) on the slopes of Monte Mario, a little distance outside the walls of Rome.
Because it was used by goldsmiths in soldering gold.
Minium was largely used in the manuscripts of classical times; this is mentioned by Pliny (Hist. Nat. XXXIII. 122) who says minium in voluminum quoque scriptura usurpatur.
All natural earthy pigments owe their colours to the various metals, which in combinations with different substances give a great variety of tints. Thus, iron gives red, brown, yellow and black; copper gives many shades of brilliant blues and greens; and manganese gives a quiet purple, especially in combination with an alcaline silicate.
Plutarch (De defec. Or. § 41) mentions flour made from beans as being used with murex purple and kermes crimson to give them sufficient body for the painter's purpose.
Kermes is the Arabic name for this insect.
It should be remembered that a large number of the mediaeval receipts and processes were not based on any reasonable principle, and endless complications were often introduced quite needlessly; this is well shown in a very interesting paper by Prof. John Ferguson of Glasgow on Some Early Treatises on Technological Chemistry, read before the Philos. Soc. Glasgow, Jan. 6, 1886.
The use of litharge as a drier was one of the most important improvements made in the technique of oil painting by the Van Eycks of Bruges in the first half of the fifteenth century. Before then, oil paintings on walls had often been laboriously dried by holding charcoal braziers close to the surface of the picture. Among the accounts of the expenses of painting the Royal Palace of Westminster in the thirteenth century (see above, page 110) charcoal for this purpose is an important item in the cost. Paintings on panel, being moveable, were usually dried by being placed in the sun; but, in every way, a good drier like litharge answers better than heat, either of the fire or of sunshine.
See Theophilus, I. 39.
See Vitruvius, VII. 10; and Pliny, Hist. Nat. XXXV. 41; and Dioscorides, V. 183.
Sometimes accidentally produced in domestic life by some overdrawn tea remaining on a steel knife.
The modern "lead-pencil" is wrongly named, being made of graphite, which is pure carbon. This does not appear to have been used in mediaeval times.
The vellum was not prepared in any way to receive the silver-point drawing; but when an artist wanted to make a finished study in silver-point he covered his vellum or paper with a priming of fine gesso, powdered marble, or wood-ashes; this gave a more biting surface to the paper, and made the silver rub off more easily and mark much more strongly. In the case of manuscript illuminations a strongly marked line was not needed, as the outline was only intended as a guide to the painter.
Usually meant for Saint Jerome translating or revising the Latin edition of the Bible.
Again, the first miniature in the French and Flemish Horae usually represents Saint John in Patmos writing his Gospel. The eagle stands by patiently holding the Evangelist's inkhorn. In some manuscripts the Devil, evidently in much awe of the eagle's beak, makes a feeble attempt to upset the ink. In the latest manuscript Horae this scene is replaced by the one of Saint John at the Latin Gate.
A two-columned page of text had, of course, two sets of framing lines, one for each patch of writing.
In some manuscripts lines are ruled in blue or purple, but much less frequently than in the more decorative vermilion.
In certain classes of books, such as large Bibles and Prayer-books, the custom of ruling red lines lasted till the present century.
These guiding letters were used in all the early printed books which had initials painted in by an illuminator.
As a rule these manuscript signatures in printed books were written close to the edge of the page, and so have been cut off by the binder; in some tall copies, however, they still exist.
The next stage was the numbering of each folio or leaf, and the last system was to number each page. Folios appear to have been first numbered in books printed at Cologne about the year 1470. A further modification has recently been introduced, namely, in two column pages, to number each column separately.
The Lectionary mentioned on p. 120 was written and signed by a monastic scribe called Sifer Was.
Some fine examples of magnificently bound manuscripts are illustrated by Libri, Monumens inédits; Hist. Ornam. Paris, 1862-1864.
In Geyler's Fatuorum Navicula, of which many editions, copiously illustrated with woodcuts, were published shortly before and after the year 1500, the cut showing the first fool of the series, the Bibliomaniac, represents him surrounded with books, all of which are bound after this design.
A complete sixteenth century Venetian library, consisting of a hundred and seventy volumes, all with painted illuminations on their edges, is now in the library of Mr Thos. Brooke, at Armitage Bridge, near Huddersfield. The whole collection forms a beautiful array of delicately painted miniatures, mostly the work of Cesare Vecellio, a Venetian illuminator of the latter part of the sixteenth century; see Catalogue of Mr Brooke's library, London, 1891, Vol. II., pp. 663 to 681.
An analogous change took place in the reign of Elizabeth in England when coins, which up to that time had always been made by hammering, were first struck by the "mill and screw."
In the miniature pictures in manuscripts of the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries one often sees ladies represented with their Horae suspended in this way from their girdle.
The same want of appreciation extends to bindings. As a rule a book in a fine mediaeval binding sells for no more than if it were in a modern binding by Bedford. It is only the sixteenth century bindings of so-called "Grolier style" and the like which add largely to the value of a book.
This library is now deposited in the Guildhall; the press-mark is probably that of an old monastic library.
Probably a blundered version of Pliny's statement (Hist. Nat. XXXVII. 119) that azure blue (cyanus) was invented by a king of Egypt.
This is evidently a different thing from the epicausterium or brazier for hot coals mentioned below. My friend Mr J. T. Micklethwaite suggests that it was a board covered with leather on which to stretch and dry vellum before writing on it.
An explanation of the nature and constitution of the Breviary will be found in the preface to the Psalter-volume of the Cambridge University Press edition of the Sarum Breviary, lately published.