Most colourful objects from the middle ages and the Renaissance have perished. The one type of object in which we can still appreciate the vibrant colours of the past is the illuminated manuscript – books that were copied and painted by hand for more than a millennium before the arrival of printing in Europe.
Thousands of images survive between the covers of manuscripts. A single volume may contain hundreds of images, their colours often as fresh and vibrant as they were when first applied on page. As the richest and best-preserved galleries of medieval and Renaissance paintings, illuminated manuscripts offer the largest resource for the study of colour in Europe from the sixth to the 16th century.
The Fitzwilliam Museum is celebrating its bicentenary with a stunning display of illuminated manuscripts, titled Colour: The Art and Science of Illuminated Manuscripts. The manuscripts were at the heart of the bequest with which the Fitzwilliam was established in 1816. And over the past 200 years, the collection has grown into one of the finest and largest museum repositories of illuminated manuscripts in existence. The exhibition and its catalogue showcase these treasures and the advanced research they have inspired.
The exhibition reveals the discoveries of the Fitzwilliam’s curators, scientists and conservators. It also discredits long-held misconceptions. The most pervasive myths are that medieval illuminators had a limited palette, consisting mostly of minerals; that they did not mix pigments, but used them in their pure form; and that they bound their pigments only in gum (resin) or glair (beaten egg white), unlike panel painters who applied numerous colourants in complex mixtures and bound them in egg yolk, later in oil.
Scientific analyses affirm that illuminators used both naturally occurring and artificially manufactured colourants – not just minerals, but also metals, earths, and animal- and plant-based organics. The Colour show traces remarkable developments in European illumination over the course of 10 centuries, the most obvious of which is the continuous expansion of the illuminator’s palette – an expansion paralleled in wall and panel paintings.
Mounting scientific evidence also questions the assumption that medieval illuminators employed only pure pigments. Mixtures of two pigments have been frequently identified in hues that could be easily obtained from one colourant. Purple hues were obtained by mixing blue (ultramarine, azurite or indigo) with red lakes or vermilion. By the 1300s, green colours mixed with blue (ultramarine, azurite or indigo) and yellow (orpiment or lead-tin yellow) were often preferred to the green of the corrosive copper-based hue, verdigris. Mixtures are being detected in illuminations from the 11th century, with particularly complex blends occurring in flesh tones.
By the 14th century, illuminated manuscripts and panel paintings boasted new materials borrowed from the textile, ceramic and glass industries. Even pigments rarely found in easel paintings from the late-15th and early-16th centuries are now being identified in manuscripts – some contemporaneous, others predating the paintings. These include smalt, a cobalt-containing glass that was finely ground to produce blue pigment.
Our earliest find, dating c.1420, constitutes the first-known example of smalt used as a painting material in Venice, predating the earliest occurrence identified in easel painting by half a century. It is one of the finest extant works by the Master of the Murano Gradual, named after the choir books of the Camaldolese houses in Murano, the island where glassmakers had established foundries as early as 1291. The identification of smalt in his work places him firmly in the Venetian lagoon, in direct contact with Murano’s thriving glass industry, and indicates his keen interest in experimentation with new materials.
Visitors to the exhibition, readers of the catalogue and users of the digital resource, Illuminated: Manuscripts in the Making are invited to examine the exquisite beauty, artistic skill, discriminating patronage and historic significance of the manuscripts.
Science has not been used to dissect the illuminations and strip them down to their bare bones. On the contrary, it helps reconstruct the creative process from the artists’ original concepts through their choice of materials to the finished masterpieces.
The integration of art-historical and scientific analyses reveals surprising levels of sophistication and ingenuity. It opens a window onto a world of emulation, competition and experimentation previously imagined only by the most perceptive students of art.
Stella Panayotova is the keeper of manuscripts and printed books at the Fitzwilliam Museum, Cambridge,as well as the curator of Colour: The Art and Science of Illuminated Manuscripts, which is on show until 2 January, 2017
Thousands of images survive between the covers of manuscripts. A single volume may contain hundreds of images, their colours often as fresh and vibrant as they were when first applied on page. As the richest and best-preserved galleries of medieval and Renaissance paintings, illuminated manuscripts offer the largest resource for the study of colour in Europe from the sixth to the 16th century.
The Fitzwilliam Museum is celebrating its bicentenary with a stunning display of illuminated manuscripts, titled Colour: The Art and Science of Illuminated Manuscripts. The manuscripts were at the heart of the bequest with which the Fitzwilliam was established in 1816. And over the past 200 years, the collection has grown into one of the finest and largest museum repositories of illuminated manuscripts in existence. The exhibition and its catalogue showcase these treasures and the advanced research they have inspired.
The exhibition reveals the discoveries of the Fitzwilliam’s curators, scientists and conservators. It also discredits long-held misconceptions. The most pervasive myths are that medieval illuminators had a limited palette, consisting mostly of minerals; that they did not mix pigments, but used them in their pure form; and that they bound their pigments only in gum (resin) or glair (beaten egg white), unlike panel painters who applied numerous colourants in complex mixtures and bound them in egg yolk, later in oil.
Scientific analyses affirm that illuminators used both naturally occurring and artificially manufactured colourants – not just minerals, but also metals, earths, and animal- and plant-based organics. The Colour show traces remarkable developments in European illumination over the course of 10 centuries, the most obvious of which is the continuous expansion of the illuminator’s palette – an expansion paralleled in wall and panel paintings.
Mounting scientific evidence also questions the assumption that medieval illuminators employed only pure pigments. Mixtures of two pigments have been frequently identified in hues that could be easily obtained from one colourant. Purple hues were obtained by mixing blue (ultramarine, azurite or indigo) with red lakes or vermilion. By the 1300s, green colours mixed with blue (ultramarine, azurite or indigo) and yellow (orpiment or lead-tin yellow) were often preferred to the green of the corrosive copper-based hue, verdigris. Mixtures are being detected in illuminations from the 11th century, with particularly complex blends occurring in flesh tones.
By the 14th century, illuminated manuscripts and panel paintings boasted new materials borrowed from the textile, ceramic and glass industries. Even pigments rarely found in easel paintings from the late-15th and early-16th centuries are now being identified in manuscripts – some contemporaneous, others predating the paintings. These include smalt, a cobalt-containing glass that was finely ground to produce blue pigment.
Our earliest find, dating c.1420, constitutes the first-known example of smalt used as a painting material in Venice, predating the earliest occurrence identified in easel painting by half a century. It is one of the finest extant works by the Master of the Murano Gradual, named after the choir books of the Camaldolese houses in Murano, the island where glassmakers had established foundries as early as 1291. The identification of smalt in his work places him firmly in the Venetian lagoon, in direct contact with Murano’s thriving glass industry, and indicates his keen interest in experimentation with new materials.
Visitors to the exhibition, readers of the catalogue and users of the digital resource, Illuminated: Manuscripts in the Making are invited to examine the exquisite beauty, artistic skill, discriminating patronage and historic significance of the manuscripts.
Science has not been used to dissect the illuminations and strip them down to their bare bones. On the contrary, it helps reconstruct the creative process from the artists’ original concepts through their choice of materials to the finished masterpieces.
The integration of art-historical and scientific analyses reveals surprising levels of sophistication and ingenuity. It opens a window onto a world of emulation, competition and experimentation previously imagined only by the most perceptive students of art.
Stella Panayotova is the keeper of manuscripts and printed books at the Fitzwilliam Museum, Cambridge,as well as the curator of Colour: The Art and Science of Illuminated Manuscripts, which is on show until 2 January, 2017
