Preface

Alexander, Jonathan J. G.

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Preface

Jonathan J. G. Alexander

Medieval Illuminators and Their Methods of Work

This book is based on the James P.R. Lyell Lectures in Bibliography given at Oxford University Oxford University in the summer of 1983. The Electors, whom I must thank for the honour of their invitation, require the Reader to deliver five one hour lectures. I have kept the main subject divisions of the lectures as given, but I have tried to alter my spoken text to a more acceptable written version, without entirely losing the looser framework of the lecture format. I have also enlarged and …

Author

Jonathan J. G. Alexander

PublisherYale University Press

https://doi.org/10.37862/aaeportal.00081.004

Stable URL: https://aaeportal.com/?id=-13425

Preface

This book is based on the James P.R. Lyell Lectures in Bibliography given at Oxford University in the summer of 1983. The Electors, whom I must thank for the honour of their invitation, require the Reader to deliver five one hour lectures. I have kept the main subject divisions of the lectures as given, but I have tried to alter my spoken text to a more acceptable written version, without entirely losing the looser framework of the lecture format. I have also enlarged and altered the text, especially the second lecture which has become Chapters 2 and 3, and, of course, I have added footnotes. The fact that this has taken me so long is due to interruptions caused by other projects, principally the Sandars Lectures given at Cambridge University in 1985 and my work on the exhibition of English Gothic art, ‘Age of Chivalry’, held at the Royal Academy of Arts, London, from November 1987 to March 1988. The initial work on the lectures could not have been done without a term’s sabbatical leave from the University of Manchester where I was then teaching. The completion of the process of turning the lectures into a book has been made possible by the generous time allowed for research, and the excellent facilities provided by the Institute of Fine Arts of New York University where I have taught since 1988. There I also had the privilege of a semester’s research leave in 1990. I express my gratitude to both the University of Manchester and New York University, and to my colleagues in both Institutions, as also to three research assistants at the Institute of Fine Arts, Diane Booton, Erik Inglis, and Maria Saffiotti, who helped me with this text in numerous ways.

I am very aware of the problems caused by the time gap between the original research for the lectures and their publication. Since I gave the lectures, interest in the illuminated manuscript book has continued to grow greatly, and the literature in equal measure. If it was possible then to be reasonably aware of the secondary literature, at least for certain periods and geographical areas, it is increasingly difficult to keep abreast of even restricted subject areas now. My aim was always to provide a general survey, however, and to trace patterns of continuity and of change over ‘la longue durée’. This account was, even when it was originally undertaken, selective and therefore incomplete. The reader will notice, for example, the geographical imbalance in the concentration on Britain, France, the Netherlands and Italy, with comparatively little said about Spain, Germany, Eastern Europe or Scandinavia. Manuscript production in the Eastern Byzantine Empire is intentionally completely left out. For more extensive coverage of particular areas, particular periods or particular types of manuscript texts and production, the reader must go to more specialised literature, where also fuller bibliographical citation will be found than I have considered necessary or desirable.1 In addition to the older general account by D. Diringer, The Illuminated Book: Its History and Production (2nd edn, London, 1967), and the more recent general surveys by J. Backhouse, The Illuminated Manuscript (Oxford, 1979); R.G. Calkins, Illuminated Books of the Middle Ages (Ithaca, New York, London, 1983); C.F.R. de Hamel, A History of Illuminated Manuscripts (Oxford, 1986); O. Pächt, Book Illumination in the Middle Ages: An Introduction (London, 1986) (for a review of Backhouse, de Hamel and Pächt, see L.F. Sandler, Art Bulletin, 70, 1989, 521–3); J. Glénisson, ed., Le livre au Moyen Age (Turnhout, 1988), the following works concerned more particularly with the subject matter of my own book should be cited: S. Hindman, J.D. Farquhar, Pen to Press: Illustrated Manuscripts and Printed Books in the First Century of Printing (College Park, Maryland, 1977). R.G. Calkins, Programs of Medieval Illumination (Franklin D. Murphy Lectures, V) (Helen Foresman Spencer Museum of Art, University of Kansas, 1984). Text and Image, Acta, vol. X, ed. D.W. Burchmore (Center for Medieval and Early Renaissance Studies, State University of New York at Binghamton, 1986), especially S. Hindman, ‘The Roles of Author and Artist in the Procedure of Illustrating Late Medieval Texts’, pp. 27–62. S. Hindman, ‘The Illustrated Book: An Addendum to the State of Research in Northern European Art’, Art Bulletin, 68 (1986), 536–42. C. de Hamel, Medieval Craftsman. Scribes and Illuminators (London, 1992).

There is another point at which it has been more difficult to impose limits on my investigation, and that is the relation between text and illumination. My subject matter concerns the practical possibilities and constraints which influenced illuminators as they planned and executed their work. Thus the first chapter is concerned with surviving evidence as to who the illuminators were, in order to place them in their social and historical context. In the second and third chapters, in addition to some account of their materials, I have investigated the ways in which instructions as to subject matter or placement of illumination were received or transmitted. In the remaining three chapters, which are arranged chronologically, I have presented case studies and examples in an attempt to show their visual sources, and to demonstrate how these were adapted, copied or newly created in particular instances.

I have, in all this, only incidentally been concerned with the subject matter of their illumination – what is conventionally described as iconography. However, how illuminators illustrated or decorated their manuscripts obviously depended on the texts themselves, and inevitably there has been an overlap from the question of how it was done, to the question of what had to be represented. It has been impossible to draw the line between the two questions.

Since the late 1970s, much valuable work in the matter of text and illustration has been done by a number of scholars, so that we have an account of that relationship in many more examples than when I prepared my lectures.2 S.D. Smith, Illustrations of Raoul de Praelles’ translation of St Augustine’s City of God between 1375 and 1420, Ph.D. (Institute of Fine Arts, New York University, 1974). See also her ‘New Themes for the City of God Around 1400: The Illustrations of Raoul de Presles’ translation’, Scriptorium, 36 (1982), 68–82. V.G. Porter, The West Looks at the East in the Late Middle Ages: the Livre des merveilles du monde’, Ph.D. (Johns Hopkins University, 1977). C. Lacaze, The Vie de St Denis Manuscript (Paris, Bibliothèque nationale fr. 2090–92), Ph.D. (Institute of Fine Arts, New York University, 1978). D. Byrne, The Illustrations to the Early Manuscripts of Jean Corbechon’s French Translation of Bartholomaeus Anglicus, Ph.D. (Cambridge University, 1981). A.D. Hedeman, The Illustrations of the Grandes Chroniques de France from 1274 to 1422, Ph.D. (Johns Hopkins University, 1984). M. Camille, The Illustrated Manuscripts of Guillaume de Deguilleville’s Pèlerinage 1330–1426, Ph.D. (Cambridge University, 1985). D. Oltrogge, Die Illustrationszyklen zur 'Histoire ancienne jusqu’à César’ 1250–1400 (Europäische Hochschulschriften, Ser. XXVIII, No. 94) (Frankfurt a.m., etc., 1987). See also Texte et Image (Actes du colloque international de Chantilly, 13 au 15 octobre 1982) (Paris, 1984). S.L. Hindman, Christine de Pizan’s Epistre d’Othéa’. Painting and Politics at the Court of Charles VI (Toronto, 1986). L.E. Stamm-Saurma, ‘Zuht und wicze: zum Bildgehalt spätmittelalterlicher Epenhandschriften’, Zeitschrift des deutschen Vereins für Kunstwissenschaft, 41 (1987), 42–70. For recent work on the illustrated Saints’ Lives, see pp. 84–9, nn. 40–47. Of earlier studies, the following should also be mentioned: J.V. Fleming, The ‘Roman de la Rose’. A Study in Allegory and Iconography (Princeton, 1969); I. Zacher, Die Livius-Illustration in der Pariser Buchmalerei (1370–1420) (unpubl. diss, Free University of Berlin, 1971); K. Laske-Fix, Der Bildzyklus des Breviari d’Amor (Munich, Zürich, 1973); H. Frühmorgen-Voss, Text und Illustration im Mittelalter. Aufsätze zu den Wechselbeziehungen zwischen Literatur und bildender Kunst, ed. with introd. N.H. Ott (Munich, 1975); Text und Bild. Aspekte des Zusammenwirkens zweier Künste in Mittelalter und früher Neuzeit, eds C. Meier, U. Ruberg (Wiesbaden, 1980). Moreover, a greater theoretical sophistication has led to an analysis of meaning on other levels than was earlier, for the most part, attempted. These analyses have been able to draw on theories of ideology in examining how particular interests were served in representation.3 For pioneer works in this respect concerned with Charles V see C.R. Sherman and D. Byrne, p. 143, n. 92, and also V. Porter (as in n. 2). Also particularly significant are the papers by B. Abou-el-Haj, cited p. 168, n. 40, and the recent book by M. Camille, The Gothic Idol. Ideology and Image-Making in Medieval Art (Cambridge, 1989). Also of great importance have been studies which can be broadly linked to ‘reception theory’, and which have led to a greater awareness of the audiences of the illuminated manuscript. There has been great interest in literacy and in the differences between an oral and a literary culture.4 F.H. Bäuml, ‘Varieties and Consequences of Medieval Literacy and Illiteracy’, Speculum, 55 (1980), 237–65. B. Stock, The Implications of Literacy: Written Language and Models of Interpretation in the Eleventh and Twelfth Centuries (Princeton, 1983). M. Clanchy, From Memory to Written Record. England 1066–1307 (London, 1979). M. Camille, ‘Seeing and Reading: Some Visual Implications of Medieval Literacy and Illiteracy’, Art History, 8 (1985), 26–49; id., ‘The Book of Signs: Writing and Visual Difference in Gothic Manuscript Illumination’, Word and Image, 1 (1985), 133–48; id., ‘Visual Signs of the Sacred Page: Books in the Bible moralisée’, Word and Image, 5 (1989), 111–30.

Where an earlier approach might have taken account of a particular patron, both these newer approaches have led to a conception of meaning as generated in the interaction between a more broadly defined audience, and the images in a variety of texts. At the same time, meaning can no longer be thought of as closed, unvarying or static, as in earlier iconographic studies. Here the influence is apparent of semiology, the study of signs, as well as of currents which can be broadly characterised as structuralist and post-structuralist. These approaches, especially influential in literary studies, are now at last beginning to affect our studies too.

This book in one way has a more restricted subject, though in another it aims to range widely. I have tried to gather evidence, which seems to me relevant for my particular questions concerning illuminators’ methods and decision processes, from examples taken from a wide area both geographically and temporally. As interest in book illumination has grown it has, no doubt, been inevitable that specialists have had to specialise more. But even apart from the initial confinement to a single one of the many media practised by medieval artists, to concentrate entirely on Europe north or south of the Alps, or to confine ourselves too rigidly to this or that century, has a tendency to make us myopic and unable to appreciate broader issues of artistic practice. So I have aimed to give an account which will serve, by its generality, to lift scholars’ heads from what sometimes seems to me too narrow a focus. And this must be my justification for an account which is diachronic rather than synchronic, and which in the process inevitably sacrifices depth for breadth.

My first introduction to manuscript illumination was in a seminar on the Vienna Genesis held by Otto Pächt at Oxford University in 1959. I attended it as a nervous undergraduate with two other students, one of whom was Emmy Wellesz, whose book on the Vienna Genesis appeared the following year. Since then I have had the good fortune to be in personal contact with many of the scholars who have contributed so notably to the study of the illuminated book. This was first due to Pächt himself, through whom I came to know, for example, Francis Wormald, Carl Nordenfalk and Meyer Schapiro. Secondly, from my first post in the Department of Western Manuscripts, I encountered both the group of scholars interested in the manuscript book and resident in Oxford, Tom Boase, Pierre Chaplais, A.B. Emden, Neil Ker, Roger Mynors, Graham Pollard, Beryl Smalley and, a little later, Bob Delaissé, as well as the many visitors from all over the world to the library, senior scholars like E.A. Lowe, Rosy Schilling, Bernard Bischoff and Millard Meiss, and the younger students just setting out having completed their doctorates like myself. Richard Hunt, the Keeper of Western Manuscripts, always liked to know what his readers were up to, and he actively encouraged us, his staff, both to share with and to acquire information from our visitors. In that way, Duke Humfrey’s Library acted almost as a research institute in those far off days when there were few, if any, such places in existence. In this way, I became part of a wider community which continued to grow after my departure in 1971 to Manchester, through conferences, travels and correspondence. This community, sometimes referred to as the ‘Tiberius C. VI Club’,5 In reference to the shelf-mark of an eleventh-century Anglo-Saxon Psalter in the British Library! Temple, Anglo-Saxon Manuscripts, cat. 98. My friend, Michael Kauffmann, is the first person I am conscious of having heard using this phrase. which was then small enough to know personally a relatively large proportion of its members is still, even if it has so greatly expanded its membership, notable for its friendliness and sense of camaraderie in research.

In these circumstances I would find it impossible to recall, or to list all the many colleagues and friends from whom I have learnt, and who have shared information with me, whether by giving me references to sources or by communicating precious shelf-marks (this, of course, is the arcane lore with its weird vocabulary of our ‘mystery’, which gives our Club its title), or simply through shop-talk, described to me by Francis Wormald in our first meeting as ‘the best talk in the world’. So I hope that all my friends and fellow-workers, in the same spirit of generosity, will accept my thanks as being no less grateful for being generally expressed. This must also apply to the very many librarians who over the years have given me access to objects in their care.

I wish nevertheless to make some exceptions. Michael Gullick not only read critically the first version of this text, but has continued since with a regular flow of letters and cards to draw my attention to valuable material I did not know. His comments as a practising scribe/illuminator with an intimate first-hand acquaintance with the medieval manuscript have been particularly valuable. Other friends and colleagues of long standing read all, or parts of my text, and contributed valuable corrections and suggestions. They were Richard and Mary Rouse, whose own Lyell Lectures on Parisian manuscript book production are eagerly awaited, and Walter Cahn, to whom I am grateful for reading in particular the material concerned with the earlier Middle Ages. They have improved my text in numerous ways, but are in no way responsible for such errors and omissions as still remain. I would also like to thank John Nicoll and Rosemary Amos at Yale University Press; the former for designing this book, the latter for her meticulous editorial work on the text. I also owe particular thanks to the Lyell Electors and to their Chairman, David Vaisey, for a generous financial subvention for the illustrations of this book.

Finally, in my dedication to Marie and François Avril, I recall one of my oldest manuscript friendships. My first meeting with François was in the Cabinet des Manuscrits at the Bibliothèque nationale in 1961, when our excited and increasingly noisy conversation finally provoked complaint from an irate reader, so that we had to leave and continue elsewhere the discussion of the Norman manuscripts on which we had both independently started to work for our theses. My debt to him is one shared by practically every member of the ‘Club’, who all at one time or another come to the Bibliothèque nationale to draw on his extraordinarily wide knowledge and experience of manuscripts, which are so generously and unfailingly shared. My own friendship with Marie and François has been cemented by constant meetings, hospitality and correspondence over almost thirty years now. Such are the precious rewards which come to us over and above the rich fulfilment we receive as scholars from our chosen areas of enquiry.

Jonathan J.G. Alexander
Institute of Fine Arts
New York University 1992

1 In addition to the older general account by D. Diringer, The Illuminated Book: Its History and Production (2nd edn, London, 1967), and the more recent general surveys by J. Backhouse, The Illuminated Manuscript (Oxford, 1979); R.G. Calkins, Illuminated Books of the Middle Ages (Ithaca, New York, London, 1983); C.F.R. de Hamel, A History of Illuminated Manuscripts (Oxford, 1986); O. Pächt, Book Illumination in the Middle Ages: An Introduction (London, 1986) (for a review of Backhouse, de Hamel and Pächt, see L.F. Sandler, Art Bulletin, 70, 1989, 521–3); J. Glénisson, ed., Le livre au Moyen Age (Turnhout, 1988), the following works concerned more particularly with the subject matter of my own book should be cited: S. Hindman, J.D. Farquhar, Pen to Press: Illustrated Manuscripts and Printed Books in the First Century of Printing (College Park, Maryland, 1977). R.G. Calkins, Programs of Medieval Illumination (Franklin D. Murphy Lectures, V) (Helen Foresman Spencer Museum of Art, University of Kansas, 1984). Text and Image, Acta, vol. X, ed. D.W. Burchmore (Center for Medieval and Early Renaissance Studies, State University of New York at Binghamton, 1986), especially S. Hindman, ‘The Roles of Author and Artist in the Procedure of Illustrating Late Medieval Texts’, pp. 27–62. S. Hindman, ‘The Illustrated Book: An Addendum to the State of Research in Northern European Art’, Art Bulletin, »

2 S.D. Smith, Illustrations of Raoul de Praelles’ translation of St Augustine’s City of God between 1375 and 1420, Ph.D. (Institute of Fine Arts, New York University, 1974). See also her ‘New Themes for the City of God Around 1400: The Illustrations of Raoul de Presles’ translation’, Scriptorium, 36 (1982), 68–82. V.G. Porter, The West Looks at the East in the Late Middle Ages: the Livre des merveilles du monde’, Ph.D. (Johns Hopkins University, 1977). C. Lacaze, The Vie de St Denis Manuscript (Paris, Bibliothèque nationale fr. 2090–92), Ph.D. (Institute of Fine Arts, New York University, 1978). D. Byrne, The Illustrations to the Early Manuscripts of Jean Corbechon’s French Translation of Bartholomaeus Anglicus, Ph.D. (Cambridge University, 1981). A.D. Hedeman, The Illustrations of the Grandes Chroniques de France from 1274 to 1422, Ph.D. (Johns Hopkins University, 1984). M. Camille, The Illustrated Manuscripts of Guillaume de Deguilleville’s Pèlerinage 1330–1426, Ph.D. (Cambridge University, 1985). D. Oltrogge, Die Illustrationszyklen zur 'Histoire ancienne jusqu’à César’ 1250–1400 (Europäische Hochschulschriften, Ser. XXVIII, No. 94) (Frankfurt a.m., etc., 1987). See also Texte et Image (Actes du colloque international de Chantilly, 13 au 15 octobre 1982) (Paris, 1984). S.L. Hindman, Christine de Pizan’s Epistre d’Othéa’. Painting and Politics at the Court of Charles VI (Toronto, 1986). L.E. Stamm-Saurma, ‘Zuht und wicze: zum Bildgehalt spätmittelalterlicher Epenhandschriften’, Zeitschrift des deutschen Vereins für Kunstwissenschaft, 41 (1987), 42–70. For recent work on the illustrated Saints’ Lives, see pp. 84–9, nn. 40–47. Of earlier studies, the following should also be mentioned: J.V. Fleming, The ‘Roman de la Rose’. A Study in Allegory and Iconography (Princeton, 1969); I. Zacher, Die Livius-Illustration in der Pariser Buchmalerei (1370–1420) (unpubl. diss, Free University of Berlin, 1971); K. Laske-Fix, Der Bildzyklus des Breviari d’Amor (Munich, Zürich, 1973); H. Frühmorgen-Voss, Text und Illustration im Mittelalter. Aufsätze zu den Wechselbeziehungen zwischen Literatur und bildender Kunst, ed. with introd. N.H. Ott (Munich, 1975); Text und Bild. Aspekte des Zusammenwirkens zweier Künste in Mittelalter und früher Neuzeit, eds C. Meier, U. Ruberg (Wiesbaden, 1980). »

3 For pioneer works in this respect concerned with Charles V see C.R. Sherman and D. Byrne, p. 143, n. 92, and also V. Porter (as in n. 2). Also particularly significant are the papers by B. Abou-el-Haj, cited p. 168, n. 40, and the recent book by M. Camille, The Gothic Idol. Ideology and Image-Making in Medieval Art (Cambridge, 1989). »

4 F.H. Bäuml, ‘Varieties and Consequences of Medieval Literacy and Illiteracy’, Speculum, 55 (1980), 237–65. B. Stock, The Implications of Literacy: Written Language and Models of Interpretation in the Eleventh and Twelfth Centuries (Princeton, 1983). M. Clanchy, From Memory to Written Record. England 1066–1307 (London, 1979). M. Camille, ‘Seeing and Reading: Some Visual Implications of Medieval Literacy and Illiteracy’, Art History, 8 (1985), 26–49; id., ‘The Book of Signs: Writing and Visual Difference in Gothic Manuscript Illumination’, Word and Image, 1 (1985), 133–48; id., ‘Visual Signs of the Sacred Page: Books in the Bible moralisée’, Word and Image, 5 (1989), 111–30. »

5 In reference to the shelf-mark of an eleventh-century Anglo-Saxon Psalter in the British Library! Temple, Anglo-Saxon Manuscripts, cat. 98. My friend, Michael Kauffmann, is the first person I am conscious of having heard using this phrase. »

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