John's Eagle

10th century AD Egmond Gospels St Johns Eagle.

Features of interest and worth studying

Combining circles with squares  Use of split lines Color Composition

Carolingian Word ART

#carolingian #wordart #manuscript #centaur

A charming page from a 9th century Ad manuscript in which the letters have become the illustration !

Maybe this will give you ideas for modern word art?

A Flemish Book of Hours

Here's a double page from a Flemish Book of Hours that demonstrates several aspect of European culture in the Middle Ages:

ONE) Fantasy Illustration is not a recent innovation

TWO) Other scripts then "GOTHIC" were used.

THREE) Interaction of Illumined Manuscript and Techniques used for larger paintings
Note the use of shadows.

FOUR) Use of workshops there seems to be at three separate "hands" involved on these pages! Possibly four if the calligrapher wasn't one of the other artists.

Or just enjoy the images without analysing them!

Bilingual Coptic Arabic manuscript

A bilingual manuscript. #coptic #arabic

The byzantine influence is very evident in the header ornament and cross and you can see the influence of Greek uncial scripts on the Coptic lettering and the skill of all the scribes involved as the Arabic letters balance surprisingly well with the Coptic.

One thing I have noticed about Greek and Coptic Byzantine manuscripts is a tendency to not have marginalia but use ornamentation on headers and page dividers.

Scribes as Apostles and vice versus.

There seems to have been a meme amongst Manuscript Illuminators of depicting St.Mark as a Scribe.

Here's a gallery of some of the images I've found so far

I do wonder if any of these were "selfies" by the scribe / illuminator ?

Renaissance Book Binding

#books #bindings #renaissance #antiquebooks #italianrenaissance #andreamategna

While looking for images of St. Mark I found this painting by #AndreaMategna which includes an image of a bound book.

Search Wikipedia for StMark and follow the links if you want a copy but for those of you who are busy here's a cropped closeup of the book.