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grembolismfaith-blog · 8 years ago

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Illuminated Manuscripts

The handwritten decorated and embellished Books known as illuminated manuscripts are monumental to the history of humans, books and also art. They were made around the time the revolutionary craft of printing books came into fruition. In the realm of art, illuminated manuscripts are very important in that they affected design history and also are the largest category of medieval paintings. The works depict the evolution of human knowledge and societal developments during this time period. Illumination as used in regards to these Historical manuscripts is defined by Merriam Webster as “rendering illustrious or causing to be resplendent (shining brilliantly or gleaming)” this points towards how the ideas underlying these works of art is entirely different to from the ideas that motivate an artist to make illustrative books. Being able to record thoughts and ideas is a uniquely human capability, and the inspiration to visually depict imagery is what created art before it was regarded by society as such.

Two types of books were created in the ancient world before modern books came to be bound and mass produced the way they are now. The rotulus (scroll) and the codex (flat leaved book). The rotulus came first and was the form that the ancient egyptian Book of the dead was written in the fourth millennium BC on was on papyrus scrolls made of reeds grown along the nile river. Although the material was very fragile it could be rolled into very long rolls ( as long as 150 ft)

The sides of the rolls were wrapped around spindles which the reader would turn to expose more text that written in vertical column formations. The codex was book form that took form in early stages hinged wood and clay tablets, the surfaces on the inside covered with wax that was then scribed into by a sharp writing utensil called a Stylus. Eventually the Codex replaced the rotulus which was largely influenced by this form being preferred by christians. Codices began to have sheets of parchment as the pages made from animals skins such as calves sheeps and goats.The animal skins were clean dried and smoothed into sheets that were better for illuminators and scribes to create work on. Production processes were developed in the 4th century and the materials quality has improved, as the sheets of parchment were made in lighter and more uniform in shade and texture. During 6th and 7th century increasing demands resulted in lower quality in order to create higher quantity of codices available to readers. Late medieval and early renaissance manuscripts were written on a luxurious white and ultra thin parchment rumored to have been made from skin of unborn babies, but likely was made from rabbit skins. Parchment sheets are folded into whatever the desired size is and gathered and bound in the form of a book.

The decorative illustrative depictions of the text on these pages is known as “illumination”. This can just be the large first letter of a passage, or pictorial illustrations. The term Miniatures

Was used in the middle ages to describe figured illustrations directly corresponding to the narrative in the text it accompanied. They were made in very similar techniques to medieval painting just on a smaller scale. Historians found that the text was written first and area below were designated for miniatures to be illustrated. The scribe would often instruct the artist on what to create even giving simple outline sketches.

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