The rich palette shared by the four main artists and their assistants includes carbon black, lead white, chalk, vermilion and red lead. Every page has a one-sided strewn-flower panel in its outer border, and a profusion of initials and line fillers with violet-grey acanthus delicately graded in white against russet backgrounds patterned with exquisite shell gold motifs. Less important texts open with historiated initials, also surrounded by full borders. Large miniatures of Christ, the Virgin and the saints with full borders mark major text divisions. Another deluxe feature is the provision of full historiated borders for all twelve Calendar pages and for many other texts throughout the volume. Painted on single leaves, the frontispieces demonstrate an expedient measure adopted by manuscript professionals by the early 15th century, namely the production of individual images ready for insertion into a volume as and when a client wished to upgrade a standard manuscript into a richly illustrated one. Three of the frontispieces are still in the manuscript the fourth one, originally inserted before fol. The four large clusters of texts received double openings with a full-page frontispiece facing a large initial surrounded by a full border. The manuscript combines the texts and images characteristic of late medieval Books of Hours with less canonical, but equally popular texts and illustrations found in deluxe commissions.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |