The Illuminated Books of the Middle Ages

Although most of the artists who decorated the religious, literary and historical writings of the Middle Ages with their illuminated letters and figures remain anonymous, colour, photography has made their work increasingly familiar to the present-day public. For many centuries, however, these exquisite miniatures were available only to those who had access to the manuscripts. Then, In the 1840s, new chromolithographic printing techniques were developed which made it possible to convey the glorious colours of the originals by superimposing different tints on one another; and with these technical improvements came a fresh interest in illumination The illuminated Books of the Middle Ages is among the finest of the nineteenth-century books printed by the new process. The author and illustrator, Henry Noel Humphreys, who provided the scholarly text and copied the illuminations in the new medium, took care to include examples of the greatest possible range of styles and added a comprehensive list of important illuminated books to his Introduction.

The first of his colour plates depicts a folio from the seventh-century Lindisfarne Gospels, the last shows part of the Prayer Book of Louis XIV of France painted around 1,000 years later. As his selection makes clear, Humphreys was primarily interested in the decorative aspects of the illuminator's art, and in addition to 'making copies of whole pages, he has also borrowed sections of ornament and individual letters to enhance his text.

An inspiration to the would-be illuminator, or to anyone seeking authentic medieval ornament to incorporate into modern design, this beautiful book is also an important reference work for the art historian and an example of Victorian printing at its best.