FMP: Inspiration - Illuminated Manuscripts

Whenever I think of fairy tales my mind flicks back to those Disney films where they open up with pages of medieval books that start the story of the main character (e.g. Snow White, Brier Rose). There is just something about medieval books that I really like and the intricate detail found in their illustrations is really inspiring.

However my main inspiration for medieval-inspired books is an artists book by Natalia Goncharova, but due to copyright issues I cannot post the photos I took of it online. Therefore I have decided to look at medieval books that have a similar design. Because of the fact that I am now going to illustrate the wedding invitation by hand, so it would be a lot easier for me to go into detail as I find drawing a lot easier to do by hand.

Mood Board

The first time I had seen medieval books “for real” was during my trip to London to see the Illuminated Manuscripts. Unfortunately I wasn’t allowed to take any photos due to the delicacy of the pages so I went onto Google to produce a mood board all of those manuscripts that have inspired me. 

Image sources: http://merryfarmer.net/2012/06/25/medieval-monday-illuminated-manuscripts/ http://historicconnections.webs.com/historyofwriting.htm http://bonnie0109.wordpress.com/tag/illuminated-manuscripts/ http://podosokorskiy.livejournal.com/2475969.html?nojs=1  

Similarities in design

As I was gathering images for my mood board I realised that all of these manuscripts had something in common in that for the background they always had vines and flowers. In some they’ve included characters from the main illustration but overall they always used flowers. These are done with such delicacy as most of the lines are extremely thin and each flower is extremely small. I can only imagine the artist bending over the book, squinting as they drew.

I find that these images aren’t enough for inspiration so I took a trip to the library and borrowed a book by Janet Backhouse called The Illuminated Manuscript to get some more ideas going.

The Illuminated Manuscript – Janet Backhouse

As I have mentioned above, these manuscripts are incredibly detailed due to the amount of intricacy in the forms. Here are several that I found inspiring (all images are taken from the book):

From left to right:

1. Treatise on Falconry by Giovanni Pietro Balbasso of Vigevano: a hawking party. 
2. Boccaccios Des cas de nobles homes et femmes malhereux: Laurent de Premierfait presenting his translation to John, Duke of Berry. 
3. Aristotle’s Ethics
4. Bedford Psalter and Hours: The Tree of Jess; Samuel anointing David 
5. Breviary of John the Fearless: The Ascension. 
6. Bible Historiale, Vol. 1: The Holy Trinity.
7. St Omer Psalter: ‘Beatus’ page.  
8. Queen Mary’s Psalter: The marriage at Cana. 
9. Evesham Psalter: The Cruxifiction. 
10. Bible Moralisee: Christ’s miracles of healing.  
11. Camaldoli Psalter: ‘Beautus’ initial.
12. Lindisfarne Gospels: opening of St Luke

Apparently “a single, illuminated book may contain several hundred paintings” according to Backhouse, and this is probably due to the amount of illiterate people during this era. The illustration accompanies the text to help the viewer understand the story and is normally the main focal point of the story. This is because of the small amount of space for the text that is separated from the illustration by a “white box” as it were. A good example of this is no.8 Queen Mary’s Psalter: The marriage at Cana: there is only space to fit 3 lines of text!

I found that not only the illustrations were elaborate but the borders as well, often showing interlacing flowers and vines although some do have little characters in it that are within the story. However I found that some of the borders belonging to religious books are quite plain in comparison to other books.

Another highly decorative feature is on the initials at the beginning of every new paragraph. They too have floral patterns interlacing with the letterform, and human characters are seen in some. If the page doesn’t have an illustration to accompany with it then it is usually this initial the main focal point as they cover around 3 or 4 lines of text (much like the Drop-caps technique). 

Conclusion:

Even though I am very inspired by the amount of detail within these manuscripts I think that they are a bit too detailed, and like I mentioned above there isn’t enough space for the type. The type that is going to be on the wedding invitation is perhaps the most important thing and so I want that to be the main focal point.

However I do like the fact that they often featured an illustration on one page and then the text on the other (although these designs are very minimum) so I might do something like that for my design.