Hidden Treasures: Illuminated Manuscripts from Midwestern Collections | Page 5

fig 6: Miniature from a
Book of Hours with Virgin
and Christ Child, ca.
1490–1500, Attributed to
Jean Poyet, French (Tours),
active 1483–1497, tempera
and gold on parchment,
Lent by The Minneapolis
Institute of Arts, The
William Hood Dunwoody
Fund, 14.12

fig 7: Prayerbook of
Cardinal Archduke
Albert VII of Austria
with Crucifixion, Flemish
(Brussels), 1597, tempera
and gold on parchment,
Private Collection

fig 8: Joseph’s Coat Presented
to Jacob, possibly from
the Speculum humanae
salvationis, English (London),
ca. 1420, tempera and gold on
parchment, Les Enluminures
Ltd., Chicago, Ill.

The stages of creating an illuminated manuscript include preparing the animal skin for writing
and painting; writing the text and rubrics; drawing figural and ornamental designs to accompany the text; applying thinly beaten gold leaf and bright pigments derived from mineral,
vegetable, and animal sources; ordering the individually folded parchment sheets into gatherings, or quires; then stacking the quires and sewing and binding them together between
leather-covered wooden boards. The labor was done by specialized craftsmen and occasionally women, namely parchmenters, scribes, rubricators, and illuminators. Even from the early
medieval period, illuminated manuscripts were created in lay scriptoria and workshops as well
as monastic establishments. The thirteenth century saw a sharp rise in secular production, but
monks and nuns produced illuminated manuscripts in the monasteries and convents well into
the late Middle Ages and Renaissance. In fact, book illumination was executed by some of the
leading monumental artists of the day, especially in thirteenth- to fifteenth-century Italy.
These manuscripts were treasured from the moment of inception. The materials came at great
expense, from processing parchment and acquiring mineral pigments, such as lapis lazuli
for the intense blues, as well as the precious metals silver and especially gold. An unfinished
French Book of Hours written and illuminated around 1450 allows the modern viewer to see
the distinct phases of the making of a medieval manuscript. The exhibition also includes a
rare alphabet pattern book created in northern Italy in 1450 by the illuminator Guiniforte da
Vimercate. It is still unclear whether a manuscript such as this one would have been a repository of source material for the illuminato ˊéݽɭ͡