Here is a brilliantly colored leaf from a 13th century illuminated manuscript depicting scenes from the Aeneid, a classical work by the Latin poet Virgil. The lavish use of bright colors like blue, red and gold is typical of high quality medieval illuminated works.
Long ago, in a more genteel age, the famous Lebanese poet Kahlil Gibran wrote in his moving poem “Sand and Foam” that “We live only to discover beauty. All else is a form of waiting.” This is a Truth that we all too often forget as the harsh demands of our hectic day-to-day lives relentlessly engulf us.
It is also an adage that underscores what makes art so special. Art is concentrated beauty given tangible form. Regardless of the medium used to create it, each stroke of the artist’s paintbrush, stylus or pen is made with the intention of distilling the divine essence of beauty into a physical form. And nowhere is this striving for unearthly beauty more obvious then when looking at the sumptuous designs and rich colors of medieval European illuminated manuscripts.
An illuminated manuscript is a handwritten book (or single page of such a book) that has been decorated with colored pigments. European illuminated manuscripts were manufactured during the medieval period from approximately 600 CE to circa 1550 CE and were usually in Latin, the lingua franca of medieval Europe.
Illuminated manuscript production was driven by two different institutions. European monasteries, the last bastions of literacy during the dark ages, became centers of book production after the collapse of the Roman Empire. Later in the Middle Ages, as European commerce and wealth grew, private scribes’ guilds began to form. These corporate-like guilds typically produced gorgeously illuminated manuscripts for wealthy clients who could afford the high cost of production.
Medieval Illuminated Book of Hours Leaves for Sale on eBay
(This is an affiliate link for which I may be compensated)
Illuminated manuscripts cover a wide range of topics, but most of them are religious in nature. The most common types of texts encountered are Bibles, Psalters, Books of Hours, Breviaries, Bestiaries and musical/antiphonal manuscripts.
Psalters were religious documents intended for private use that contained excerpts from the Old Testament book of Psalms. Bestiaries were encyclopedic tomes that contained entries of different types of animals, some real and some fantasy. Breviaries were prayer books used by monks to guide their periodic daily prayers.
Books of Hours were personal prayer books used by private individuals. Some of the most magnificent illuminated manuscripts to survive from the later middle ages are Books of Hours that were commissioned by extravagantly wealthy patrons. A good example of this opulence is the priceless Tres Riches Heures of the early 15th century French nobleman, Jean le Duc de Berry.
The creation of an illuminated manuscript was an involved and time consuming process that involved many different stages. These precious documents were committed to dried animal skin – usually sheep or cow – which was known as parchment, or vellum, if made from calfskin. Parchment is extremely durable and will easily last for centuries, if not millennia, as long as it is stored in a climate controlled environment.
Medieval Illuminated Bible Leaves for Sale on eBay
(This is an affiliate link for which I may be compensated)
Parchment preparation could take months by itself, and a full book might require the skin of 100 cows. After the parchment was ready, it was ruled so that the written text would be straight. Then the text itself was added via quill or reed pen. Next, initials, borders and figures were outlined followed by the application of gold or silver leaf and other pigments. Finally, all the pages were assembled and bound, usually in a leather or wooden cover.
A typical illuminated tome might have easily taken many different highly skilled medieval craftsmen hundreds of man hours to create. By the later Middle Ages these steps were usually executed in a proto assembly line process by different individuals, each of whom was a master in his own area of expertise.
Illuminated manuscripts were produced in a time before synthetic dyes. This meant that saturated, vibrant colors were rare, highly prized and exceedingly expensive.
Gold and silver colors were produced by delicately applying paper-thin gold or silver leaf to a document. Vermillion, a high quality red, was made from a powdered ore of mercury called cinnabar. An intense green came from crushed malachite, a semi-precious copper carbonate mineral, while the renowned deep blue of ultramarine originated from another exotic, semi-precious stone called lapis lazuli. Malachite and lapis lazuli were rare in Europe and had to be imported thousands of miles from the remotest, most inaccessible mountains and deserts of Asia.
Other, more common materials, like lead, iron, or organic matter, were also used in the production of various pigments, but these often resulted in less intense colors.
Medieval Illuminated Antiphonal and Music Leaves for Sale on eBay
(This is an affiliate link for which I may be compensated)
The invention of Gutenberg’s famous movable type printing press in 1453 signaled a sea-change in the way books were produced. Until that time the effort and materials that went into an illuminated manuscript meant that books were expensive luxury items. And the more richly illuminated a book was the more expensive it became to produce. In an age of drab earth tones, only the very wealthiest members of society could afford these brilliantly hued repositories of treasured wisdom.
Over the course of the century following its introduction, the printing press changed that situation completely. Book production ballooned after the advent of Gutenberg’s press, increasing dramatically between 1450 CE and 1550 CE due to the new technology. Traditional, labor-intensive illumination techniques were wholly unable to compete with the cheaper, faster printing press. Consequently, illuminated manuscript production rapidly declined until output was essentially nil by the middle of the 16th century.
People crave beauty. Once our more basic biological needs have been met – food, water and shelter – it is only natural for humans to seek out exquisite objects of refinement and elegance. And there are few things of greater artistry than medieval illuminated manuscripts. Laboriously, painstakingly crafted by hand at every stage of their creation, medieval European illuminated manuscripts represent the pinnacle of late medieval art. And yet these wonders of human ingenuity can be wonderfully affordable investments.
A single illuminated page with modest yet enchanting adornments can be acquired for only around $300. More complex and colorful individual leaves that radiate distinctive medieval European style are readily available to the connoisseur for around $1,000. Prices escalate quickly as the amount of decoration increases however, and vibrant, fully illustrated pages can easily sell for several thousands of dollars each.
Fully intact books are usually prohibitively expensive, routinely selling for tens of thousands of dollars – even if imperfect or pedestrian in execution. Exceptionally fine, complete manuscripts command even higher prices and rapidly enter the lofty domain of major museums and the ultra-wealthy.
If we all live to discover beauty, then surely medieval European illuminated manuscripts are beauty made manifest, descended to earth as a revelation to us.
Read more in-depth Antique Sage medieval art investment guides here.
