illuminated manuscripts have historically been created

Illuminated manuscripts have historically been created full#

The opening chapters focus on the materials and designs associated with elements of the architectural shell-doors and windows, walls, floors and ceilings-followed by chapters on the furniture and fittings necessary to provide warm, light and hygienic living and sleeping spaces.

The persistent lack of specific room functions in the period dictates the structure of the text. An initial from the Pontifical Erazma Ciolka (Princes Czartoryski Foundation, RKPS 1212) shows the Birth of the Virgin in a comfortable ground-floor room with tiled floor and barred windows, furnished with a sturdy wooden bed, cradle, wall cupboard and a table and chest set with fine metalwork vessels. A mural painter, in hat and loose-fitting shift, sits on a chest balanced upon a table, hard at work in a secular interior in the Kraków Statutes of the Painters (Biblioteka Jagiellorìska MS 16). Illustrations from British Library manuscripts predominate, many of them well known, but a number of unfamiliar delights show the wonders of early 16th-century Polish manuscript illumination.

Illuminated manuscripts have historically been created full#

Captions are admirably full in terms of commentary and pressmark, date and folio references-scholarly information all too often omitted or relegated to the back of a volume.

Designed as an introduction to domestic interiors (mainly of high status) from the 14th to the 16th century, the book’s informative illustrations are selected from illuminated manuscripts, with an emphasis on Flemish and French material. Medieval and Renaissance Interiors in Illuminated Manuscripts allows readers to indulge that enthusiasm historically. For many, the temptation to look, unobserved, into other people’s houses is irresistible.