Early manuscript illuminations are astonishing for their beauty and detail. Some early books are witness to a mixture of various artistic styles; others are religious books that inspired awe. Heidi Catherine Gearhart, associate professor of art history at George Mason University, presents the most luxurious and fascinating examples of illuminated manuscripts from western Europe from late antiquity to the later Middle Ages.
She introduces the story of manuscript illumination by looking at examples from the late Antique period to the Gothic era. Beginning with the oldest surviving illustrated codices, she considers their relation to older traditions of scrolls and tablets and discusses how practices of illustration evolved over time.
By the early Middle Ages, in examples like the Book of Kells, illuminated manuscripts display intricate interweaving of text and decoration, and by the high Middle Ages letters became both frames for images that might explain or expound on the text and were a space for drawings of figures or animals. While in the earlier Middle Ages books were largely made at monasteries and in the court, by the end of the medieval era, books were being made professionally for students, laypeople, and collectors. Some of these collectors’ books, like the Très Riches Heures du Du de Berry, contained full-page, highly naturalistic, and richly detailed illuminations, as if they were paintings in and of themselves.
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