Narkiss, Bezalel. Hebrew Illuminated Manuscripts. Jerusalem: Keter, 1969.
Sed-Rajna, Gabrielle. “The Illustrations of the Kaufmann Mishneh Torah.” Journal of Jewish Art
6(1979):64–77.
——. “The Paintings in the London Miscellany.” Journal of Jewish Art 9(1982):18–30.
MANUSCRIPTS, PRODUCTION AND
ILLUMINATION
. Throughout the Middle Ages in France, various centers were major producers and
decorators (illuminators) of manuscripts. These were books handwritten on prepared
sheep- or calfskins (vellum or parchment). Until the 13th century, manuscripts were
usually produced in the scriptoria of monasteries by monks and nuns, frequently copying
earlier examples. In the Gothic period, book production increasingly shifted to urban
centers, and books were written and decorated by lay scribes and illuminators, sometimes
several working together in workshops. By the 15th century, book dealers or publishers
might farm out the book to artisans working separately. At the same time, secular texts,
often translated into or written in the vernacular as opposed to the Latin of earlier
manuscripts, became increasingly popular among the aristocracy and wealthy bourgeois.
During late antiquity and the Merovingian period, it became customary to enlarge and
decorate capital letters beginning major sections of the text. These initials might be
decorated with abstract or geometric forms like those found on barbarian metalwork or
with whimsical zoomorphic elements made up of animals, fish, and human limbs, as in
some Merovingian commentaries on the books of the Bible produced at the monastery at
Luxeuil in the 7th century. Inhabited initials, made up of plant forms with animals and
humans clambering around in the branches, became prevalent in the Carolingian and
Romanesque periods. The “historiated” initial, containing scenes, usually incidents from
the Bible, was another Carolingian invention that remained popular throughout the
Romanesque and Gothic periods. Miniatures (so called after the minium, or red ink, used
in their underdrawings) served as pictorial illustrations to the text. They might be full-
page frontispieces to the manuscript or major divisions within it, or partial-page
illustrations introducing chapters or the relevant portion of the text.
Beginning in the mid-13th century, introductory capital letters began to sprout tendrils,
branches, and leaves into the margins around the text, eventually surrounding it and,
together with the repetitive strokes of the script and painted horizontal bars, filling out the
block of the text (line endings) enhancing the decorative effect of the entire folio. These
border decorations then began to serve as a habitat for marginal scenes, cavorting
animals, strange hybrids (marginalia, or drolleries), and eventually additional scenes
expanding or commenting on the subject matter of miniatures on that or a facing page. In
the second half of the 15th century, the foliate borders were often painted
illusionistically, depicting flowers and other objects as though they were three
dimensional, casting a shadow against a solidly colored background.
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