Illuminated manuscripts for sale archive#

The illuminator, who was a specialist distinct from the scribe, had a repertoire of visual motifs that he or she employed to decorate the manuscript according to the nature of the text and the expense of the commission. How were illuminated manuscripts decorated? When the text was completed, the manuscript was decorated or illuminated in the blank spaces the scribe had intentionally left for the illuminator. Rather than write original works spontaneously onto the page, medieval scribes, more often than not, copied their work from model texts, called exemplars. Rubrics served as instructional guides to the reader, providing descriptive headings and marking divisions in the text. While the main body to the text was usually written in black or brown ink, colored lines of writing, called rubrics (from the Latin rubrica meaning red), were most often, but not always, written in red. In the other, gall nuts, the swollen nodules produced by certain insects living in oak trees, was mixed with iron salts, making an ink which eventually turned brown from exposure to the atmosphere. In one method, carbon soot from beeswax candles or linseed oil lamps was combined with gum arabic to produce an indelible black ink. The scribe used an ink derived either from carbon soot or gall nuts. In the early Middle Ages, the best quills came from several varieties of geese found off the coast or England. Using these holes as a guide, lines were then inscribed or drawn on the page to establish the layout for the scribes and decorators.įollowing this, a calligrapher or scribe would write on the parchment with a reed or feather quill pen. Once the necessary number of vellum skins were prepared and cut to size for pages, they were then marked along both margins with small pinholes.

The finest quality parchment, noted for its thin and supple character, was called vellum. Most parchment came from cow skins that were prepared through an elaborate process that involved soaking, scraping, drying and treating the skins. How were illuminated manuscripts made?ĭuring the medieval period, books were written and decorated on parchment, a type of animal skin. Manuscripts that were decorated with gold, silver or bright paint are called illuminated, from the Latin illuminare meaning to lighten or brighten up.

Its name is derived from the Latin manus meaning hand and scriptus meaning writing. How Illuminated Manuscripts acquire valueĪn illuminated manuscript is a book written and decorated by hand.

What books were Illuminated, and where?.

In 2008, she gave the Prayer Book of Claude de France to the Morgan Library, where she served as a fellow.

Illuminated manuscripts for sale archive#

She gifted his extensive archive to the MoMA in 2007. These works had been confiscated by the Nazis during World War II. In addition to her collecting and philanthropy, Elaine was known for her pursuit of the restitution of around 400 works of art that once belonged to her late husband’s father, the prominent French art dealer Paul Rosenberg. Together with her husband, art dealer Alexander Rosenberg, who died in 1987, philanthropist Elaine Rosenberg amassed the collection over several decades. That result marks the highest price ever paid at auction for a work by Plato. The second-most expensive lot of the auction was a first-edition book by Plato, which sold for a record-setting $1 million, against an estimate of $200,000. The last time it sold at auction was in 1977, when the Rosenbergs acquired it for $200,000-meaning that its value has multiplied by 18 times since then. 1440) and comprising 16 miniature paintings, the book sold for $3.6 million, against an estimate of $1.5 million. The top lot of the sale was a French illuminated manuscript attributed to the anonymous artist known as the Master of the Paris Bartholomeus Anglicus. “This was a once-in-a-generation auction,” Donadoni said. In an interview with ARTnews, Eugenio Donadoni, a Medieval and Renaissance manuscripts specialist at Christie’s, described the Rosenberg books collection as the most significant one offered at auction in five decades.

Because of the rarity of tomes such as these, auction houses only stage a sale of this caliber once every few decades. The Rosenberg sale spurred renewed attention for a collecting category that peaked back in the 1990s. Collection to Be Sold at Christie'sĪt Christie's Art + Tech Summit, Web3ers Sell Each Other on Mass Data and Mass Adoption