American collectors and the trade in medieval illuminated manuscripts in London, 1919–1939

2018 ◽  
pp. 63-78
Author(s):  
Laura Cleaver ◽  
Danielle Magnusson
2016 ◽  
Vol 25 (1) ◽  
pp. 96-109
Author(s):  
Kristen Marangoni

The enigmatic setting of Beckett's novel Watt has been compared to places as diverse as an insane asylum, a boarding school, a womb, and a concentration camp. Watt's experience at Knott's house does seem suggestive of all of these, and yet it may more readily conform to the setting of a monastery. The novel is filled with chants, meditations, choral arrangements, hierarchical classifications, and even silence, all highly evocative of a monastic lifestyle. Some of Watt's dialogue (such as his requests for forgiveness or reflections on the nature of mankind) further echoes various Catholic liturgies. Watt finds little solace in these activities, however. He feels that they are largely rote and purposeless as they are focused on Knott, a figure who in many ways defies linguistic description and physical know-ability. Watt's meditations and rituals become, then, empty catechisms without answers, something that is reflected in the extreme difficulty that Watt has communicating. In the face of linguistic and liturgical instability, the Watt notebooks present a counter reading that can be found in the thousand plus doodles that line its pages. The drawings reinforce as well as subvert their textual counterpart, and they function in many ways as the images in medieval illuminated manuscripts. The doodles in Watt often take the form of decorative letters, elaborate marginal drawings, and depictions of a variety of people and animals, and many of its doodles offer uncanny resemblances in form or theme to those in illuminated manuscripts like The Book of Kells. Doodles of saints, monks, crosses, and scribes even give an occasional pictorial nod to the monastic setting in which illuminated manuscripts were usually produced (and remind us of the monastic conditions in which Beckett found himself writing much of Watt). Beckett's doodles not only channel this medium of illuminated manuscripts, they also modernize its application. Instead of neat geometric shapes extending down the page, his geometric doodle sequences are often abstracted, fragmented, and nonlinear. Beckett also occasionally modernized the content of illuminated manuscripts: instead of the traditional sacramental communion table filled with candles, bread and wine, Beckett doodles a science lab table where Bunsen burners replaces candles and wine glasses function as beakers. It is through these modernized images that Watt attempts to draw contemporary relevance from a classic art form and to restore (at least partial) meaning to rote traditions.


Author(s):  
Edward Morris

‘Early Nineteenth-Century Liverpool Collectors of Late Medieval Illuminated Manuscripts’, written by Edward Morris, describes the pioneering phase of the collecting of illuminated manuscripts that began in the early nineteenth century and came to an end in the mid-nineteenth century.


2006 ◽  
Vol 37 (10) ◽  
pp. 1012-1018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Danilo Bersani ◽  
Pier Paolo Lottici ◽  
Francesca Vignali ◽  
Giuseppa Zanichelli

Author(s):  
Marina Vidas

Marina Vidas: Un Deu Enemi. Jews and Judaism in French and English Medieval Illuminated Manuscripts in the Royal Library The article analyzes images of and texts about Jews and Judaism in five medieval illuminated manuscripts in the collection of the Royal Library, Copenhagen. I begin by examining the references to Jews in a bestiary (MS GKS 3466 8º) composed in the twelfth century by Philippe de Thaon for Queen Adeliza of England and copied a century later in Paris. Then I analyze depictions of Jews in a French early thirteenth-century personal devotional manuscript (MS GKS 1606 4º) as well as in a number of related de luxe Psalters and Bibles in foreign collections. Textual references to Judaism and Jews are examined in a compilation of saints’ lives (MS Thott 517 4º) as well as depictions of individuals of this faith in an Hours (MS Thott 547 4º), both made in fourteenth-century England for members of the Bohun family. Lastly, I analyze images illustrating legends derived from the Babylonian Talmud in a Bible historiale (MS Thott 6 2º), executed for Charles V of France (r. 1364–1380).I argue that images depicting Jews in narrative cycles had a number of meanings, some of which can be interpreted as anti-Jewish. I suggest that the images also played a role in shaping the piety of their audiences as well as the intended viewers’ understanding of their social identity. Indeed, depictions of Jews in the manuscripts seem mostly unrelated to the actually existing Jews. Members of the Hebrew faith were often represented in contexts in which their appearance, beliefs, and activities were distorted to emphasize the holiness, goodness, and perfection of Christ and the Virgin Mary. It is also suggested that their representations may have spurred a reflection on, and sometimes even a criticism of, Christian behavior and attitudes.


2016 ◽  
Vol 79 (1) ◽  
pp. 10-43
Author(s):  
Matthias Schulz

Abstract Among the early medieval illuminated manuscripts of the ninth century, the De laudibus sanctae crucis (Cod. Reg. Lat 124) by Hrabanus Maurus offers one of the most complex interplays of image-text relationships based on carmina figurata. It unfolds different levels and strategies of figuration. The specific aspects and qualities of its iconic practice can be described as a kind of coding. The coded subject and leitmotif of the cycle, which affects and gives structure to all other miniatures, is the central figure of Christus triumphans. The essay focuses on the detailed description and analysis of this symbiotic dynamic of a figural impulse that combines seeing, reading, and imagination into a meta-concept of figuration.


Author(s):  
Elizaveta V. Zotova ◽  

The article discusses the images of St. Jerome in the historiated initials in Latin Bibles. The iconographic variability of illustrations to the Jerome Prologues to the books of Holy Scripture, in 12th – 13th century manuscripts, demonstrates the lack of unified iconographic schemes for their themes during the period discussed. At the same time these illustrative sources show the processes of change in the formation of iconography: the traditional iconographic schemes used in medieval illuminated manuscripts (portraits of the author, dedication scenes) and their further transformation in new contexts, reveal such major themes as the connection of images with text and the functions of the image and the initial in the book.


2019 ◽  
Vol 70 (2) ◽  
pp. 229-264
Author(s):  
JESÚS RODRÍGUEZ VIEJO

The German city of Mainz under Archbishop Willigis (975–1011) witnessed a major flourishing of the arts, particularly in the field of architecture. During this period, a benedictional, now in St Gall, was also commissioned. Its only figurative content is an image of Christ in Majesty on its first folio. Taken as a case study, analysis of this permits an approach to the barely-explored concept of performativity in early medieval illuminated manuscripts. This Maiestas Domini, the list of blessings contained in the book and contemporary depictions of religious ceremonies invites consideration of the joint role that image and manuscript played in the dynamic liturgical rites during which the benedictional was handled.


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