![]() ![]() Check back soon for an upcoming post on the dead men in the manuscript’s margins! 44v (detail)Īs if these weren’t enough, there’s much more happening in the margins of this wonderful book. 25v (detail)Ī sufferer from leaf and mouth disease?, TM 836, f. 23v (detail) and this one rolls his eyes in evident exasperation, TM 836, f. You can practically see this pen-drawing sigh in weary resignation, TM 836, f. They’re fascinatingly variable – and inexplicable – but most of all they are vividly expressive. 1375-1400Īs in the Breviary just above, merely decorative pen flourishings periodically give way to lively faces peering out into the margins. Curled lips, wry smiles, and crooked noses are the products of his or her own delight in the work.Ī similar relish is on display in this English manuscript:Įntranced by the pen decoration curling overhead, this face adorns an initial in a chronicle of English history, the Eulogium historiarum, TM 836, f. ![]() What stands out even more in these flourished faces, though, is the artist’s evident interest in capturing a range of features and expressions. Along with the dog-like creatures frisking in this Breviary’s initials, there is a veritable community of tonsured men facing – or sometimes even singing or shouting – out into the margins and gazing heavenward. The tonsured face gazing upward atop this handsome initial could represent an imagined user of this finely decorated Breviary. 185v-186, Southern Germany or Alsace (Upper Rhineland), dated 1370, with fifteenth-century additions This seems to be a possibility in another prayerbook, teeming with faces drawn by an adept pen flourisher:ĭominican Breviary, TM 829, ff. Could it be that they are praying and that, for all of their strangeness, they represent the users of the prayerbook themselves? Are they blowing smoke rings? Speaking? Singing? In most cases the lines emanating from their mouths do end in crosses. While the saints in initials like this one follow an established iconography though – we know we’re looking at a penitent Jerome here because he is clothed in a chest-baring robe and holding a stone with which to beat his breast – these flourished faces and their exhalations do not parse so easily. Saint Jerome beats his chest in penance in this detail of TM 815, f. What’s more, these fanciful faces are all drawn in the same prayer book with the more traditional historiated initials shown earlier! Here, again, extra space in the upper margin has provided the pen flourisher with an irresistible playground. This fellow is part of the decorative flourishing on an initial whose placement on the page gave someone – probably the scribe? – the space to embellish a bit. Just as powerful, if often less comprehensible, are the human faces that peer out from the page in less expected places. Illuminated figures like these complement the texts they accompany in ways we can understand, by putting us face to face with saintly intercessors in a book of prayer, or showing us the patrons (whether divine or human) of the very texts we are reading. ![]() 40v (detail), Northern Italy (Lombardy?), c. Painted initials on glimmering golden grounds frame saints at their devotions.Īn unidentified saint clasps his hands in prayer in this historiated initial within an illuminated Carthusian Breviary, TM 815, f. Saint Jerome (far right) gives an epistle to a messenger, who is also depicted handing it to Furia (far left), its intended recipient, in this elegant frontispiece, painted by the Master of Spencer 6, in this deluxe copy of Jerome’s Letter LIV to Furia, in the French translation of Charles Bonin, f. Miniatures can become windows into vivid moments of human action and interaction. It is especially exciting when the book looks back! ![]() We all know that it is a pleasure to look through the pages of a decorated manuscript. The initial opens the same text in a Franciscan miscellany, TM 675, f. This historiated initial depicts author Isaac of Nineveh presenting his Liber de contemptu mundi to Christ. ![]()
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