The Influence and Spread of the Bohemian Decoration System to Fifteenth-Century Manuscript Production in Vienna and Nuremberg

Florence was the center of humanist book production, not only in Italy, but more generally in the West. This essay discusses the new style of classical and humanist books produced in fifteenth-century Florence, focusing on script, decoration, major libraries (the Angeli, the badia, San Marco), collectors (the Medici, Parentucelli, Jean Jouffroy, King Alfonso of Naples, Federico da Montefeltro), and the booksellers (Guarducci, Vespasiano).

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The Waning of Manuscript Production

The Oxford Handbook of Latin Palaeography ◽

10.1093/oxfordhb/9780195336948.013.94 ◽

2020 ◽

pp. 566-578

Author(s):

Gregory Hays

Keyword(s):

Fifteenth Century ◽

Transitional Period ◽

Printing Press ◽

Gradual Decline ◽

Manuscript Production

This chapter discusses the gradual decline of manuscript production after the invention of the printing press in the 1450s, focussing on the transitional period in which both printed and hand-written books coexisted. By the end of the fifteenth century, even as manuscript production was declining, professional scribes were still producing manuscripts for wealthy patrons, in a wide variety of scripts. Also treated are the continued production of “subprint” manuscripts, which were texts whose nature or content were unfeasible or unsuitable for printing (personal books, banned books, documentary texts).

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Law manuscripts from fifteenth-century Iceland

Gripla ◽

10.33112/gripla.32.7 ◽

2021 ◽

Vol 32 ◽

pp. 165-198

Author(s):

Stefan Drechsler

Keyword(s):

Fifteenth Century ◽

Fourteenth Century ◽

The Other ◽

Black Death ◽

Other Hand ◽

Manuscript Production ◽

The Law ◽

Law Texts ◽

Textual Content ◽

Further Development

This article discusses a number of interdisciplinary aspects of Icelandic law manuscripts, produced in the fifteenth century, which contain important vernacular legal codes dealing with secular and ecclesiastical matters in medieval Iceland, such as Jónsbók and Kristinréttr Árna Þorlákssonar. In this article, it is argued that a continuity of law manuscript production exists in Iceland following the Black Death in 1402–04; this is seen in several ways: indications are found in textual and artistic parts of the manuscripts, as well as in para-texts that accompany the law texts in the margins. With particular focus on the manuscript AM 136 4to (Skinnastaðabók), this article discusses four distinctive cross-disciplinary features of fifteenth-century Icelandic law manuscripts: the adaptation and further development of textual contents initially found in law manuscripts dating back to previous centuries, select types of layouts chosen by the initial scribes, the book painting, and the use of the margins by later users and owners for comments and discussion on the textual content. The article concludes that with the changing Scandinavian politics in the late fourteenth century, Icelandic law manuscripts in the fifteenth century were first and foremost written for, and inspired by, domestic productions. While texts related to Norwegian royal supremacy and trade are rarely featured, the texts most used for domestic issues appear more frequently. On the other hand, statutes and concordats occur as regularly in these manuscripts as they do in earlier works, which indicates ongoing contact with the Norwegian Archdiocese of Niðaróss during the fifteenth century.

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Representing the Ancient Past in the Fifteenth-Century Maffei Tacitus (MS GKS 496 2º)

Fund og Forskning i Det Kongelige Biblioteks Samlinger ◽

10.7146/fof.v56i0.118928 ◽

2017 ◽

Vol 56 ◽

pp. 41

Author(s):

Marina Vidas

Keyword(s):

Fifteenth Century ◽

Italian Renaissance ◽

Ancient Greek ◽

The Past ◽

Full Page ◽

Depth Analysis ◽

Manuscript Production ◽

Intended Reader ◽

Similarities And Differences ◽

Coats Of Arms

Marina Vidas: Representing the Ancient Past in the Fifteenth-Century Maffei Tacitus (Copenhagen, Royal Library, MS GKS 496 2º) The focus of this article is a splendidly illuminated Italian Renaissance manuscript, MS GKS 496 2º, in the collection of the Royal Library, Copenhagen, containing the text of Annals (Books 11–16, 35) and Histories (Books 1–5, 14) composed by the Roman historian Tacitus (c.55–c.120). The coats of arms, which are found at the bottom of folio 1r, clearly identify the owner of the manuscript as belonging to the Maffei family of Rome and an inscription on f. 196r states that the text was emended by the humanist scholar and scribe Ludovico Regio of Imola, who is known to have copied and/or annotated at least five manuscripts for Agostino Maffei (1431–1496). The article argues that the intended reader of the Copenhagen Tacitus was Agostino Maffei, who in Rome during the 1480s and 1490s was actively commissioning copies of and collecting manuscripts with texts by ancient Greek and Roman authors. The article discusses the context for the commission and subsequent annotations to the text undertaken by Ludovico. It is also pointed out that the hand which executed the headings and incipits of the Annals is very reminiscent of that of the celebrated Paduan scribe Bartolomeo Sanvito (1435–1511), who rubricated at least one manuscript and possibly another for Agostino Maffei. In addition, an in-depth analysis is made of the work of the illuminator: the full-page frontispiece, f. 1r, and ten miniatures at the opening of each of the books of Tacitus’ works, ff. 11v–187r, which have been attributed by art historians to either Giovan Pietro da Birago (fl. c.1463–1513) who, by 1490, was the leading illuminator at the Sforza court in Milan, or to the hand of an unknown master, who was influenced by Birago. The article discusses sources for the all’ antica illuminations and points out the artist’s reliance on pictorial precedents. But while many architectural frontispieces in fifteenth-century Renaissance manuscripts have a monumental quality and a celebratory air, the opening page of the Copenhagen Tacitus exposes the fragmentary state of the remains of the past. The ruin, along with the truncated sculptures and mythological beings accompanying the initials, might have been intended to provoke meditations on the past and a longing for the great things that once existed. It is also suggested that images in the Tacitus manuscript visualize lines of the text which they accompany and that attention is drawn to the artist’s skill as a painter as well as to his creativity. Light is also shed on the similarities and differences between the miniatures in the Maffei Tacitus and those in books attributed to Birago or to the Master of the Barozzi Breviary. It is assessed that the figure style employed in the Tacitus is quite close to that of the master who painted the illuminations in the Barozzi Breviary (Vienna, Österreichische Nationalbibliothek, Inc. 4, H.63) and to that of Birago in his signed frontispiece of the Sforziada (Warsaw, Biblioteka Narodowa, Inc. F. 1347). However, there are some notable differences in the execution of hair, proportions of the figures’ bodies and the degree of activity in the compositions in the Copenhagen and Warsaw volumes. It is therefore concluded that the Maffei Tacitus was more likely to have been painted by the Master of the Barozzi Breviary than by Birago. Lastly, because Agostino Maffei was a man who was interested in many facets of the ancient past and involved in all aspects of manuscript production, it is suggested that he might have expressed some ideas about how the Tacitus should be illuminated and that the manuscript that exists today in Copenhagen incorporates these wishes.

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Gothic Script in France in the Later Middle Ages

The Oxford Handbook of Latin Palaeography ◽

10.1093/oxfordhb/9780195336948.013.107 ◽

2020 ◽

pp. 320-360

Author(s):

Marie-Hélène Tesnière

Keyword(s):

Fifteenth Century ◽

Middle Ages ◽

Manuscript Production ◽

The Many

This chapter surveys the many types of Gothic scripts that were in use in France from the thirteenth to the fifteenth century (and beyond). It discusses the different scripts in detail and shows the chronological evolution of individual scripts as evidenced by the manuscript production in France, especially in Paris.

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Aristocratic and Popular Piety in the Patronage of Music in the Fifteenth-century Netherlands

Studies in Church History ◽

10.1017/s0424208400012456 ◽

1992 ◽

Vol 28 ◽

pp. 195-224 ◽

Cited By ~ 1

Author(s):

Roger Bowers

Keyword(s):

Fifteenth Century ◽

Fourteenth Century ◽

Low Countries ◽

Popular Piety ◽

The North ◽

Manuscript Production ◽

High Esteem ◽

Good Living ◽

The Church ◽

South Of Europe

It has always been recognized that during the fifteenth century the vigorous and affluent commercial towns of the Low Countries served as centres of artistic excellence, especially in respect of painting and of manuscript production and illumination. That the region was no less fertile a generator of practitioners and composers of music—especially of music for the Church—has also long been appreciated. If for present purposes the Low Countries be defined—rather generously, perhaps—as the region coterminous with the compact area covered by the six dioceses of Thérouanne, Arras, Cambrai, Tournai, Liège, and Utrecht (see map), then it was an area if not packed with great cathedrals, yet certainly thickly populated with great collegiate churches, which sustained skilled choirs and offered a good living and high esteem to musicians who composed; the area also sustained a catholic and generous patron and consumer of artistic enterprise of all sorts, sacred and secular music included, namely, the House of the Valois Dukes of Burgundy and its Habsburg successors. From the end of the fourteenth century to the first half of the sixteenth, the region produced church musicians in such numbers that it became the principal area of recruitment for those princes of the south of Europe who were seeking the ablest men available to staff their household chapels. The Avignon popes of the 1380s and 1390s, the dukes of Rimini and Savoy, and the Roman popes of the mid-fifteenth century, and from the 1470s onwards the fiercely competitive dukes of Milan and Ferrara, the popes, cardinals, and bishops of the Curia, the king of Naples, the prominent families and churches of Florence and Venice, all alike recruited from the North; and though many of the ablest, like Ciconia, Dufay, Josquin, Isaac, and Tinctoris, were lured south to spend their lives in the sunshine, many more remained at home to maintain the Low Countries tradition.

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