Drawing as an Art Form in Medieval Manuscripts

I'm honored and delighted to be asked to give this lecture in conjunction with this superb exhibition and I really congratulate the museum and the medieval department and Melanie helom on their achievement I've had some experience in this field and know what it takes to persuade libraries and museums to agree to lend such very great Treasures I also want to thank Betsy Williams of The Institute of Fine Arts for her part in the exhibition and for helping me with the illustrations of the lecture now was that audible at all did I need to be louder or or not so loud this lecture is called actually I forget what I called it some time ago drawings in the medieval manuscript is the subject and it is linked as you've heard to the wonderful exhibition upstairs uh human beings of many cultures from a very early time have made drawings they have used different implements and have drawn on many different surfaces with many different purposes it's beyond my remit to speculate on origins or to discuss the different words used in different languages in English we have to draw an active verb and a drawing a noun as well as other words both verbs and nouns such as sketch engrave design outline my subject is more restricted drawings made in manuscripts in Western Europe in the earlier Middle Ages though even that is vast enough in terms of techniques contexts and purposes I want first to emphasize that there is continuity with the ancient Mediterranean world and the culture of the Greeks and Romans the even earlier culture of ancient Egypt is beyond my competence but it was from Egypt that the Nile River Reed known as Papyrus came when processed this provided a smooth and even surface for writing as can be seen from the famous Egyptian books of the Dead uh visible outside in the Egyptian section uh paparis easily formed a book when it was rolled up having been joined into sections but it was a role not a codex it was written on one side only in short columns which were then read by unrolling and roll rolling up the scroll this drawing is from an early 6th Century codex's book not a scroll it contains Illustrated texts on land surveying and portraits of some of the surveyors of the second century Christian area including this of agenas he seems to pause in his reading of the scroll held in his left hand while calculating with the fingers of his right hand the image thus emphasizes is the world from which the ancient author came as does his costume the T toga draped around his half naked naked body the Codex that is the form of book with which we are still familiar today evolved from the second to Fourth century Christian era at the same period paparis began to be replaced as the most commonly used writing material by processed animal skin usually of sheep goat or cattle for which we have the words parchment or Vellum since it's often difficult to be sure what animal the skin is taken from I prefer to use the general term membrane the membrane was cleaned stretched and whitened and cut into rectangular sheets three uncut sheets in the exhibition are part of an encyclopedia compiled written and illustrated by opacus De canist who was born in pava in 1296 you can see at the top the shape of the animal's neck the backbone would have run down the center of the sheet it seems that opacus um considered membrane too expensive to waste recent work by Katarina tristano and Anna melag Gran has been Gathering evidence on the cost of making manuscripts in Italy one calculation for a group of 15th century lurgical qua books breaks down at 15% for the membrane 55% for the Scribe and 30% for the illumination these qua books were illuminated in Golden colors not drawings as here and those would always have been more expensive than drawings obviously there are a great many variables in calculating price that's only a very rough guide of the proportion of Labor and materials and this is a fascinating area on which much more work uh remains to be done the Sheets Were gathered into qus most commonly of four sheets but it might be three or five or even six sheets the four sheets when folded in half made eight folios recto and Verso or 16 Pages these were then ruled and written on both sides un like the Papyrus finally the choirs were sewn together and bound usually between wooden boards for protection all this was done by hand but is fairly familiar to us still though our books are printed not handwritten and of course machine sewn and bound paper are common everyday material don't know whether I can still say that anyway fairly common here here's a piece of paper in case none of you have ever seen one paper a common everyday material only began to be used in Europe in the 13th century having been invented in China it too was made by hand and therefore was still relatively expensive even if cheaper than membrane all the manuscripts in the exhibition are written on membrane the differences of materials as between Papyrus and membrane are significant though we should not think of Papyrus as the dry brittle material which results from its desiccation in desert surroundings it was originally as subtle as animal skin sometimes in the earlier centuries codc could still be made of Papyrus more important for the artists than the material however was the bounding of the written surface in the Codex on three sides the fourth side being referred to as the G you see an opening from uh the eyes of Queen Jean de of around 1324 to8 which the manuscript to which I'll return shortly uh it shows uh St Louis of France uh being returned his bvery which he'd lost in Egypt in his disastrous Crusade the the bvery was turned by an Angel I think that's a miracle which all Book Lovers will applaud uh this is the gutter that I wanted to show you here you see and you close the book up the role in contrast though bounded at top and bottom is continuous on two sides as it is unrolled there's no boundary the CeX therefore provided a finite shape square or rectangular the proportions varied partly in accordance with the text which might be written in one two or even three columns early cesses tend to be squarer than our books sometimes an artist would treat the whole extent of Verso to recto as a unit as in the scal macabe manuscript which I shall also return for medieval manuscripts there are occasional variations in format from the rectangle though they are exceptional this heart-shaped manuscript containing uh love songs is an example it's from France of the later 15th century size varies for pictures to a much greater extent than for manuscripts which are constrained by the twin requirements of portability and legibility these are factors to bear in mind as you look at the exhibition upstairs though there are aspects on which I cannot spend much time today Mya Shapero wrote a famous paper on the this topic of the picture surface today it is enough to mention that the early cave paintings at Lasco for example are not on a flat surface neither are they bounded by any kind of frame or linear regular ruling the rectangular frame whether it is what we often refer to as portrait that is upright or as landscape that is horizontal is therefore by no means necessary or inevitable in a manuscript and perhaps even less so for drawings than for Miniatures the miniature the latter term is generally used for paintings in manuscripts done with mineral and vegetable pigments fully painted in the Middle Ages leaf or liquid gold and sometimes silver are also used for the illustrations of a manuscript the term miniature is often used therefore and it derives from the Latin term minium meaning red lead an orange color this is the commonest pigment and the cheapest and was used for the simplest decoration of codes from the earliest time in Italian the term minare became the term to illustrate or decorated a manuscript with a minura it is only TR transference that miniature comes to mean small in English I want to stress this here because smallness has an aesthetic value in the making an illustration of a book and this is perfectly Illustrated in one of the greatest treasures of the cloer museum which I show again the tiny eyes of Jean it was illuminated for the queen of France as a gift from her husband before his death in 1328 the Illuminator was Jean pel the scenes are the lamentation and the flight into Egypt Below in the margin the Heathen Idols are toppled off their pillars and the farmer who is about to reap his corn you it tells the pursuing soldiers that the Holy Family passed by when he sowed the corn the soldiers turned back in disappointment not knowing that the corn was sown yesterday and had grown up miraculously in the night so that the family would not be captured such apocal stories not in the four gospels were used by preachers to enliven their sermons Buel places the secondary scene in the margin and it is here that he exercises his fantasy and his humor and even in includes motives which are carnivalesque and B by designing these scenes on this minute scale manuscript was about this big on this minute scale he invites the patron to inspect the images closely and to Delight in his virtuosity and skill the exhibition upstairs illustrates the rich choice not just of medium painting and drawing of various kinds and in various combinations it also shows the many varieties of scale a thorat and of surface decoration that were available to artists of the book in the Middle Ages observe the little creatures in the embroidery like blue ground up here uh of the scene uh of the flight into Egypt the most obvious choice of format that of using the whole page as on the left uh is only one of the uh choices we saw that in the agenus uh but on the uh recto side on this side uh where the three words de adut in adut in adjutorium God help me urged the readers to turn the page in for uh are written they urge the reader to turn the page in order to finish the prayer a lot of prayers you you laugh but that's what a prayer is for a lot of prayers start with those words D adutor the word page comes from medieval Latin and is a syc and and in referring to the Bible for example it was customary to talk of the Sacra pagina that's a syntic of the part for the whole in the Harley Suter seen here a manuscript written in anglosaxon England in the early 11th century at the Benedictine Monastery of Christ Church Canterbury the drawings which as you can observe are done in different colored inks have a particularly close relation to the text which they preface this is not only physically in their placement in the text column they are what is called word illustrations by which is meant they illustrate not just an event as referred to or narrated in the Suter they do that too but often just a single word for example on this page of Psalm 112 the text speaks uh I think I may have made a mistake of the page I'm sorry I'll have to I'll have to say this later I think I got confused here between two pages I'm going to tell you later how the word um illustration works placed in a manuscript book therefore drawings had various functions some more closely related to the text than others there are manuscripts for example where the drawing was an integral part because they are it is essential to the understanding the text and this class of drawings is referred to as a diagram examples are mathematical and an astronomical text and um and the famous Greek scientists who are still um household names Archimedes uclid Pythagoras Etc made crucial contributions already to the study in these fields so we have precious fragments on Papyrus of their works of a very early date this is an early uh Papyrus from a role containing texts on the Stars uh so it's simply a fragment it would have contained uh on either side uh it has diagrams to help the student just as in a modern textbook the schematic appearance of these simple drawings with their minimal coloring is sufficient to fulfill their function such drawings leave out the unnecessary information with which the world is cluttered manufacturers today understand this when they provide line diagrams with their products which tell the purchaser how to put together a piece of furniture or set up a word processor a photograph or even an artist's colored rendering would be less helpful it would confuse with a superabundance of information in the Middle Ages therefore diagrams which had a didactic purpose most often take the form of drawings and the exhibition contains a fascinating selection which gives an idea of their variety their frequency and their creativity here is a medieval diagram of the signs of the the Zodiac on the left below which links their Passage through the Heavens to the 12 months of the year the iconography is one which is still familiar to many in the west who know their own birth signs and may follow prognostications for the month ahead in the newspapers or on their computers the manuscript which it prefaces is a fragment with scientific texts written in England in the late 12th century another circular diagram on the right uh plots the winds the text below announces that Ventus EST a wind is moving air in the center are the names of the three known continents in the so-called tmat map Asia at the top Europe which is at to the left and Africa at the right so Asia above here Europa here and Africa there this conforms to the orientation of medieval maps with East at the top therefore The North Wind Blows from the left and the inscription here reads fer kikio I make the Cod the inscriptions from the four cardinal points are written in red and different colors are therefore used as we would still use them to explain what is going on medievals depended on their knowledge of the stars and their movements for calculating the passing of time and for fixing important points in the church's year above all Easter the Stars also aided navigation by sea or land many manuscripts with a variety of different texts based on Ancient astronomy included images of the constellations and of the signs of the zodiac and these were Illustrated to Aid in recognition here as a manuscript uh made in the early 11th century perhaps at the Benedictine Abbey of flurry on the LA in France and it contains classical treatises on the constellations these include hinis de astronomia and aatases phoma the latter translated from Greek into Latin by Cicero in the first century before Comm era sister's text which you see here the main text is accompanied by a commentary by an anonymous medieval known as the pseudo bead bead was one of the great um writers in this field living in the 8th century and living in North Umbria but it's this text is attributed to him but now taken away that text is written in red in so the two are combined as you see the one is much shorter than the other the Stars seen on this opening which make up the constellations lepus the hair Navas the ship and Draco the dragon are marked in red I I think you can see from back there here are the stars uh I don't know whether you've tried recognizing constellations it's not that easy I for me at any rate at least I can see the nights SK in in in Connecticut very hard in New York of course the illustrations and the various texts are copied and adapted from 9th century models and the illustrations in these models in turn go back to the ancient world the process of of transmission were very complex and much scholarship has gone into attempts to inter unravel their inter relationships the present artist was Anglo-Saxon no doubt a monk and was it seemed sufficiently famous as to be invited to visit monasteries on the continent including flurry in order to illuminate manuscripts for their libraries he Shades his drawings to give them three-dimensionality and comparisons with surviving earlier and simpler drawings in manuscripts of the thought which he probably had to copy show how Lively and creative his own drawings are what we should call scientific accuracy in the process of transmission evidently took second place another kind of diagram included in manuscripts are maps either of the known world as here in the SLE map or sometimes of a country or some smaller more local area even down to a monastic enclosure on this map which prefaces a manuscript from sley Abbey in Yorkshire England of the late 12th century the winds which we saw in an earlier slide u in the diagram of the Winds uh were the heads blowing the wind have now become Guardian Angels guarding the world the Mediterranean runs up vertically from the bottom of the center where you see hispania I don't can't know what I can find hispania here I think it runs up here and there are various Islands from the Mediterranean for instance Corsica and Sardinia Palestine is more or less in the center of the map with ascalon Bethlehem Jericho and the City of Jerusalem labeled Jerusalem which had been captured by the Christian Army from Islam about a century before in 1099 is represented by the holy sepa church rebuilt by the Crusaders at the lower left of the map is the city of Paris on the S I'm afraid you have to look for these up up you're probably too far away to see them but you'll see them clearly on the map in in in the exhibition uh Parish on the S and below it Ro and then the islands of Britannia britania insula and hiia Cas probably should in case the Irish people here on the map they're very remote right at the edge the marvels of the East known from widely read imaginary accounts of the travels of Alexander the Great as far as India that's right at the top there are labeled on the periphery but on this map unlike its more famous 30th Century rival preserved at Herford Cathedral and that's a huge great map they're not represented pictorially for the most part we seldom in the Middle Ages have all the information we would like especially about the scribes and artists in the sley map I think they may well have been one in the same person in the next example also from England this is certainly the S the the case and since he was the gous monk of St Alburn near London Matthew Paris we are unusually well informed about him he was chronicler of his Abbey making use of information supplied by well-traveled and well-informed visitors to his Abbey he knew the king of England Henry the bird personally and also the king's Brother Richard of Cornwall King of the Romans Matthew also Drew Maps both outline maps of the kind we have just seen of England and Ireland and also linear itinerary Maps the kind of map which takes you from City to City all the way from St orans which is near London as I said to Jerusalem Matthew who was writing his Chronicle from the 1240s on and died in 1259 evidently had a good deal of Freedom as what he included in it and he took to inserting drawings in the margins which is unusual in a monastic historical text of this kind for the most part these are not diagrams but narratives there are few are shorthand signs such as a shield of arms reversed to signify someone's death but the narrative scenes will also have functioned as aids to memory and as colored drawings they hark back to the anglos seex and tradition as in the Harley suto where I showed you the wrong page earlier on Matthew was certainly aware of anglo-saxon and Romanesque manuscripts in his own and other monastic libraries he shows the death of St alurn at the top on the left he's having his head cut off and on the right he's being uh um discovered by the body is being discovered and buried by King aror of Mercia the Saint's life narrates how the soldier who beheaded him was struck blind Matthew in a piece of gruesome l literalism shows his eyeballs falling to the ground copying this detail from an extent 12th century manuscript from The Abbey Library uh the body of course was kept in the Abbey of St Orbin and in Matthew's time it was preserved in a newly built Shrine which was destroyed at the suppression of the monasteries under Henry VII the fragments of the shrine which you can still see in the church there were excavated and reconstructed in the 19 century and and again just recently Matthew also tells the legendary story of the king of Britain King Leah and his three daughters Reagan goril and Cordelia Cordelia who's fleeing off to to to to France having been disinherited and he illustrates it with this little drawing below an historical event from the Crusades thus nearer to Matthew's own lifetime is the conquest of Jerusalem reconquest of Jerusalem by the caleff Saladin in 1187 uh the ground is covered in red blood and body parts as the Christian knights in chain mail struggle to hold on to the relic of the True Cross the True Cross is in the middle here this is saladine this is the king of Jerusalem the Western King another method of recording the past is through genealogy and in the context of Christianity that means the descent from Adam as narrated in the Hebrew Bible the Old Testament had been translated into Latin by St jeram in the late 4th Century in the University of Parish in the 13th century the Bible was studied by the students of Theology and commented on by the Masters and doctors of theology one of these Peter P Chancellor of the Cathedral School of nraam in Paris who died in 1215 had had the idea of making a digest of the Bible narrative he says he did this prop up prixit Sak scriptor on account of the length of sacred scripture his text which starts with Adam though this part is missing in the copy in the exhibition uh narrates the events of the Old Testament and the lives of the Patriarchs prophets and Kings of Israel including King David as a s as a as a a psalmist I think here he is here's King David um and it continues up to the birth of Christ and at this point the Virgin Mary with the child uh is shown in another round you see these are this is the whole role and it's I don't know whether it is quite as long as that but it is upstairs and it's shown flat so you can follow it down um actually St Matthew's gospel also begins with a G analogy of Jesus and his descent from Abraham Peter P's text also includes rulers of the ancient world the kings of Assyria and Persia mentioned in the bible Alexander the Great and his generals uh somewhere in there but I don't I think it's got cut off in the process uh is one of the generals you have to search about to to to find it's not always easy but for for to to to find what you're looking for so the um Alexander the Great and and tmy and the various generals who set up Their Kingdoms uh and also the Roman consuls and the Emperors to Augustus Caesar and I think Augustus Caesar is in there I think it's there um in whose Reign Jesus was born in in Bethlehem in later copies of the role the geneal of the Kings of England and France are included up to where the role was made up to whever the role was made in this way secular Royal genealogy is added to biblical genealogy sometimes this is represented in a separate role tracing Royal genealogy to Brutus or to one of the heroes of Troy Peter had the clever idea of Designing his text as a role though a vertical one unrolling from the top not a horizontal one as we saw used in the ancient world in this way the diagrams of descent runs continually from top to bottom and that's the way a genealogy is still usually designed today the present copy is made up of seven sheets and measures 126 by 11 inches so 10 feet I suppose it isn't quite as big as that though the pet of P manuscript aims to shorten the biblical text and to simplify the historical narrative it is far from a simple piece of book making as you can see the scribes and the artists who made these books are likely to have been trained professionals working in the Paris Book trade originally they will have worked under Peter's direct supervision no doubt and then from copy to copy a large number of copies of the text do indeed survive not always in Ro format and some which started as rolls have been later folded and bound to that so that they are now codex books the roles also vary in what they choose to illustrate and in how many images they include the medieval Christian view of world history is a teleological account of God's purpose for the Redemption of mankind from sin this was commonly illustrated by what is known as typology a demonstration constantly emphasized and repeated in images as well as by the spoken written word they demonstrate how the events of the Old Testament foretell the of the New Testament the words of the prophets are fulfilled in the Life of Christ this too can become a matter of very complicated exeresis in both text and image in the exhibition an example is included of a famous group of oh I've gone too far of a famous group of 12th century manuscripts from the Benedictine Monastery of St emeran in South Germany these manuscripts are typical monastic books and were written and Illustrated in the monastic scriptorium there is a close relationship between text and image and it is at least possible that scribes and artists were here to one and the same person a professed monk in terms of teaching and memory drawings have once again been chosen as the right vehicle and on this page which is concerned with typological events for telling the crucifixion Christ you can see the repetition of the Red Cross in each compartment at the top Moses lifts up his arms in the shape of the cross whil the Israelites fight the forces of the amalekites so long as the arms are lifted up for which he needs help from his companions on each side the Israelites Are Victorious uh in the bottom row uh two Israelites bring back uh a huge bunch of grapes an enormous enormous bunch of grapes from the promised land this in turn signifies the blood of Christ shed on on the cross and which becomes the wine consecrated at the Christian Mouse another page is a more straightforward visual tailing of the events of the crucifixion though here too the u words of Psalm 91 Thou shalt walk upon the ASP and the Basilisk th shall tread on the lon and the dragon are illustrated by these strange monsters twisted around the bottom of the cross I would like now to turn from drawings as diagrams and as pedagogical aids to a briefer section to show the ways in which the drawing is part of an artistic process in decorating and illustrating medieval manuscripts many perhaps a majority of the drawings made by medieval artists were not seen because they were painted over a prime example in the exhibition is the sulter written written by uh prior John tickhill of worksop Prior in Nottinghamshire England about 1303 1314 whose decoration was never completed we can see the various stages to completion therefore first come the preliminary sketches in graphite at the top left uh then comes the application of guilding and of unshaded color and lastly the process is completed by shading and highlights and a final black outline a similar process is followed in the pr Ada not from PR Italy had I'd originally thought but named after its owner Dr Jonathan PR from whom the Jewish Theological Seminary uh bought it in 1964 it is a safic hagard made in Spain around 1300 and unlike the tickl sulter none of the illumination was completed you can see very clearly the pink Bowl to which the gold leaf would have been applied before it was burnished the drawing on the recto shows the raban gamalo instructing his pupils and on the Verso is the Pascal lamb a bit faint I'm afraid here's the teacher in his chair and the pupils here's the Pascal lamb uh the Hebrew text begins at what in a Christian book would be the end and therefore the text reads from recto to Verso another much less common form of drawing at least as it survives now is found in patent books these drawings are related to the preliminary drawings which partake of the nature of sketches and form the basis of the finished work of art as we've just seen in the process of coloring such drawings uh they can be and often were altered the patent book drawings are copied in various contexts and like the preliminary drawings are a stage to the making of a complete work of art these are drawings which were kept by artists as model and were valued for this purpose only not in themselves the various names used by historians draw attention to various aspects of their use by illuminators pattern books model books and sketchbooks surviving examples are mainly now bound up as books though the failos may have started their life as independent leaves I like to use the term patent book because Patrol is the Contemporary French term used in the Middle Ages Robert in his classic survey prefers the term model books however superseded by changing functions Styles and Fashions comparatively few such books have survived and even these are often damaged and incomplete most of them must have been just thrown away significantly in view of their use by manuscript illuminators several of them contain alphabets of letters in various Styles as well as drawings of humans animals and a vegetable and decorative motives this example in the exhibition is a 12th century Italian patent book fragment on only three folios it's in the Fitz William Museum Cambridge it contains uh uh initial letters which are all drawn in ink except for two a c and an O you see on the top right the foliage animal and human figures are similar to those found in initials of manuscripts made in Tuscany in the 12th century though no initials so far found exactly copy these patterns they're a sign of the change to a professionalization of the book trade and maybe a book like this also acted so that a patron could see what an artist was was capable of and uh this is also a sign that the uh Primacy of the monastic houses as as places where books were made is now changing from now on uh monks like Matthew Paris are are are the exception not the rule and these men and occasionally women tended to work in the major cities especially University cities such as Paris Florence OR London they are named in wills and taxes and other property documents whereas monks were supposed to remain in their monasteries again Matthew pris is probably an exception to prove the rule professional book eliminators were free to travel Jean pel the Illuminator of the ARs of Jean Dev which we saw earlier evidently went to Italy since he copies compositions from Works painted only a few years earlier by duo in Sienna some other fragments of what was no doubt once a more extensive uh patent book come from the Benedictine Monastery of anon in Switzerland standing figures of St Gregory and St Benedict on the left the latter the founder of Western monasticism as the author of The Benedictine rule the former the pope of the late 6th Century who wrote the life of St Benedict are placed opposite a series of studies of a meander pattern and various curling leaf or flower forms a parrot a stalk and a third bird fill spaces in between I don't think it is a mocking bird I did see one on my journey here today but got a long tail you don't know the mocking bird no nobody a bird lover here the medieval pattern books are full of birds and that's interesting so a third bird fills spaces in between other figures are the enthroned uh Majesty figure of Christ on the left and a standing St Michael and below the Michael fitted in and that's rather typical of a pattern book uh a head and shoulders of St John the Baptist uh this figure the the John the Baptist is certainly copied from a Byzantine uh Source perhaps an icon but the initial to the lower right uh is of a type commonly found in manuscripts from Southern Germany so these are evidently motifs copied from art not from Life which could be reused in different contexts also from a manuscript in the exhibition is a leaf inserted into his Chronicle by Matthew Paris who marginal drawing of King Lear I showed earlier here he has drawn and also colored details of the heads of the Virgin and child of the Dead Christ suffering from the cross and of the Christ in Majesty Matthew was not a professional artist but he sometimes wrote and Illustrated lives of saints for women of the Court he certainly also had opportunities for travel these may be worked up details taken from wall paintings or perhaps icons which he had either seen on his travels or which may have belonged to his own Abbey of St albin's Suzanne Lewis has suggested that these are patent book drawings and we know he went on ecclesiastical business to Norway so perhaps he took them with him in case he was asked to paint a picture or a wall painting in the same volume of his Chronicle is his famous drawing of the elephant given by King Louie of France to his brother-in-law King Henry of England it was kept in the tower of London where Matthew went to see it you can tell the size of the Beast by the size of its keeper as he writes in Latin in a Latin note under the elephant's belly here here here's the note here this is a a record of Something Matthew found remarkable and that may have been part of the reason for his making the other drawings as well drawing from life as practiced by Matthew Paris is more associated with drawings made in the Renaissance and later however some very remarkable drawings on Papyrus which were made no doubt in Egypt in the first or 2 centuries Common Era show that this may have been a normal practice also in the ancient world this is the so-called artemidorus Papyrus now housed in the Museo eito in chin which includes studies of human heads of animals and of hands and feet these extraordinary virtuoso drawings have only recently become accessible it's a really spectacular discovery and the Papyrus is still in process of study and full publication it may be however that these drawings are some or even all of them drawn from sculptures rather than from Life at the other end of the time limits of the present exhibition are the nature studies which begin to appear in the 14th century I show as a token example one of the famous uh pages from the Bergamo patent book of jaavan De grai who is employed on Milan Cathedral he illuminated a famous book of ARS for Jan Galo Visconti Duke of Milan and he died in 1399 I don't know if you would be inclined to call these paintings or drawings but because they aim to record natural appearance texture and color are an essential aspect it has been suggested that jaavan had access to wild animals in the zoo kept by The visconte Dukes of Milan in the drawings I have shown so far you have seen a creative mixture of techniques combining color with ink or using colored inks for drawings in many different ways and the last example the bergo patn book which is not included in the exhibition is perhaps classifiable as a painting on the other hand Matthew's elephant of the 13th century which is included in the exhibition uh is painted I want to show you more examples of this blurring of bound Ries I want to disrupt the binary of painting and drawing as Jac Dera and deconstruction Theory have warned the binary sets up a hierarchy and that is why in this lecture I have tried to avoid it nor do I want to introduce a teleological narrative which suggests a progress to one from one to the other from drawing to painting and still less a teleological development from the Middle Ages to the Renaissance I want only to pick out a few examples in which in my opinion the artists have used their Mastery of technique to obtain special effects of vibrancy and emotion however we Define them whether as drawings in their own right or not I would argue that these are drawings used for their own sake not as a preliminary painting they are not teaching diagrams helping the viewer to memorize Concepts nor are they primarily used as a means of recording or transmitting composition or iconography they do at least uh they do of course relate in some way to the text of the manuscript in which they occur and so they are not independent of it but drawing as a medium is chosen deliberately to enhance the power of the image created it's not an impoverishment is what I'm suggesting an early example of this uh uh is a drawing which I showed earlier it is one of 30 such drawings in a manuscripts of sson gal of the late 9th or early 10th Century the text is the first first book of mccabes which is now considered an apocryphal part of the Christian Bible by Protestants but which as a narrative of the struggle between the forces of Good and Evil had relevance throughout the Middle Ages the Jewish Brothers macabe Judas Jonathan and Simon fought for the independence of Judea and their right to practice their religion in the second century Before Common Era the brothers I think are in the van of the charge and their enemies Le flee leaving a number of their enemies already dead this is an example of the artist extending the narrative across the gutter as we saw earlier it is not surprising that Melanie hul chose this extraordinary drawing for the cover of the catalog her scolly atry raises fascinating problems about its date and especially about its completion I found it difficult to imagine the drawing without the color which however is considered by some Scholars to be a later addition as we've seen earlier in the example of the tiul alter color was a process generally as a process generally comes after drawing in the medieval manuscript but in this and other cases the question of how long after is almost always a hard one to answer I'd be prepared to argue here at least that the color is not a matter of arbitrary or carelessly inserted blogs with the idea uh to improve a dull image by a later colorist who is unable to uh respond to the design as a whole it enlivens the image without destroying the Vitality of the line drawing the forward movement of the Cavalry is shown graphically by the lances raised at an angle and by the galloping horses the Panic of the enemy is also graphically demonstrated as some begin to flee and others turn back in the saddle to see how close behind them are their enemies the color which includes silver for the helmets is used mainly on the Sheep s and in this way it picks out the macabe brothers at the head of the charge the question of the application of color comes up again and again in the exhibition and surprisingly few of the drawings included are in fact monochrom it was the artists in Anglo-Saxon England in the 10th and 11th century who invented a particular form of color outline drawing which you saw at the beginning of this lecture in the Harley Suter uh here's the page that I should have shown but the other one is coming up in a minute this is the word illustration of the oops uh this is the word illustration of the Sun and the Moon the text says that from the uh rising of the sun to its going down and the artist puts that in to illustrate that particular verse uh the manuscript was illustrated by a number of different artists uh and the drawings are based um on a a carolingian Suter made at Reams in the second quarter of the 9th century it's known as from its present home as the utre sua and its drawings are in a monochrome bister ink you see it on the left it's the manuscript of the 9th century and it's written in capital letters whereas the Anglo-Saxon early 11th century manuscript is in a recognizable script recognizable to us so the UT Salter evidently reached Canter England in the early 11th century the anglosaxon artists set to copy the pictures not only add touches of color wash green blue reddish brown they actually use these colors for their line drawings the artist here shows his M Mastery of the drawing technique in the figure of the psalmist and this is very small I'm afraid it's this figure here um he must have started with blue ink and drawn the drapery in the middle of the figure and then switched to Brown and added the skirt of the do of the uh garment and the sleeves finally he adds the hands and the head in Black Ink so it's a three-stage process it must have been enormously time consuming and and and shows what a master of his art he was the coloring has little to do with naturalism though there is blue used for the water and the sky and some green on the earth the aesthetic effect that is sought is of a flickering excitement and vivacity with the same range of colors repeated all over the image this flickering line is also observable in a famous drawing of the mid 10th Century which I believe was executed by a leader of the Anglo-Saxon Church St Dunston Abbot of glastenbury from 943 to 957 the only color is the bright orange of Christ's Halo applied for emphasis rather as in the SG mcabee's drawing and some touches of orange on the kneeling figure of St Dunston at the base of the almighty here um the kneeling figure and the initials of the prayer written above him here I think it's the same pigment the prayer which I just thought he wrote himself is in his own hands and is in his own hand and in the first person in it he asked to be saved from the storms of life Save Me Oh Lord from the storms of life this masterly drawing may be credited with creating a fashion for outline drawings in the monastery of South England which were closely linked in a reform movement of which dunon was the leader and I think it was was executed by him but also of course revered as a relic of of a saint of a saint of the anglosaxon church another example of technical experiment is a Suter which is not part of the exhibition but is reproduced in the catalog it comes like the Harley Suter from the monastic Cathedral of Canterbury the premier seat of England of which Dunston was Archbishop from 957 when he left glastenbury to 988 the sulter shows St Benedict Pam monachorum father of his months of his monks one of them at the front carries a book with the first words of the rule prep Mist these are written here one of the Brethren perhaps even the Archbishop of the time himself in view of the similarity of his post to that of Dunston kisses the feet of St Benedict he could be either of two two Bishops lifing or aelo depending on what the exact date of the salt is we can only date it approximately the kneeling figure wears the zone of humility the zone of humiles the picture is in fact full of Latin inscriptions enforcing its message of humility and obedience to the rule I think for the artists there is evidently a hierarchy of technique between the grandly enthroned saint wearing a gold cope and the monks in their unpainted habits hurrying towards him it seems to be evening perhaps compin if it is a lantern that is carried by one of the monks I'm suggesting that could be a lantern another Exquisite drawing from Anglo Saxon England perhaps slightly earlier in date and from Winchester not Canterbury serves as fron piece of yet another Suter in the British Library which also unfortunately could not be included in the exhibition this drawing is simp ly framed with a brown ink line as opposed to the Gilded arch of the St Benedict it might be tempting to assume that this line is a later Edition were it not for the fact that St John's left hand which holds up the scroll on which he has been writing overlaps the frame this bursting out of the frame is a Trope of which anglosaxon artists were very fond what he is writing is his eyewitness account of the Gospel the other three evangelists Matthew Mark and Luke depended on others for their accounts they were not present the hand overlapping the frame suggests space and movement I'm talking about this Frame and the overlap here uh and it conveys an immediacy of non-perspectival conceptual means the drawing also emphasizes another aspect of monastic devotion it shows the dead Christ with closed eyes and a spurt of blood from the wound in his chest his grieving mother at his right hand holds up her mantle to stem her tears much recent art historical writing has emphasized the emotional aspects of Christian art of the later Middle Ages and has stressed the role of late medieval Christian Mystics both male and female in encouraging pictorial empathy with the sufferings of Christ it seems to me that this drawing conveys an equally intense emotion and empathy the Astic viewer of the 11th century is urged to meditate on and sympathize with the suffering of all three figures in this intensely moving drawing in the Christian context portraits of the four evangelists are extremely common but the importance of the text and the fact that the gospel was kept on the altar as an essential part of the lurgical reading at the mass meant that they are usually fully painted with expensive pigments and precious metals especially Leaf gold including in the exhibition is an Anglo-Saxon gospel book on the left which was also probably made at Christ Church Canterbury and which merges the two techniques of the colored drawings and the fully painted miniature including gold this book from the Morgan Library the so-called aronberg gospels of circle a thousand seems to have been at cologne already by the 12th century and it may even be identifiable with a gift known to have been made by King canut who died in in 1035 we know of other Anglo-Saxon illuminated manuscripts which reached the continent at an early date and which were clearly admired and copied by artists in the monasteries of North France and even Germany this example on the right is also from the Morgan Library it was both written and illuminated by Abott odbert of San beron a Benedictine Monastery near bullin Su so located just across the channel from from DOA from cerb here the drawing is emphasized very similarly to the Anglo-Saxon manuscripts by the way it is set against the red Brown background Abott odbert also included in his gospel a colored outline drawing which is a self-portrait here you are on the left the drawing he and one of his monks are presenting their books to the patron saint of the monastery s Beta And I think by implication to the to the evangelist who's on the other side you can see the bleed through here I'm afraid it's not this page it's another page but I put the page I've already shown to show that that that they're also giving their book not just to the saint odet but also to the even greater Saint uh St Matthew another gospel book this time from The Abbey of K near Amia so in the same area of North France also also uses this mixture of drawing and painting for its bravur evangelist portraits this is St John with the opening initial of his gospel in prinkipia a wonderful Romanesque animal initial with as in the Romanesque sculpture of the period artists in Germany at this time and later into the 12th century experimented with combining drawing and color but in a different way here are two pages from manuscripts of the Third qu of the 12th century one is a crucifixion from a m music manuscript from St Peter salsburg it's not in the exhibition but contains the Anton sung at the daily monastic office the other is a figure of Christ in Majesty surrounded by the symbols of the four evangelists from a missile and the text contains prayers and readings at the mass said on Sundays and the great Christian festivals these are crucial Christian texts and most copies of the gospels are fully illuminated as I've said with golden colors so it's interesting that the drawings of the three figures at the crucifixion with the added symbolic figures of the church and the synagogue uh is in red and blue ink outlined against the blue panel placed placed on a green panel this recalls the coloring of contemporary anamal Plex and the comparison is made in the exhibition I don't show it here presumably it was intentional referring to the metal work techniques of other objects placed on the altar such as the cross and the Chalice the drawing of the Majesty is placed on colored grounds in the same way now I've run over and I'm ashamed of that but somehow reading it allowed to yourself seems to go quicker I I I do these ad libs which I shouldn't do um I I've got about a page and a half more so pleas please feel free to leave I don't mind in spite of my desire not to present drawing as an inferior technique I would have to admit that the texts considered of greatest importance and especially the lurgical texts for the church services do tend to be fully illuminated in Golden colors at this period I want in this connection to comment on the subject matter of a drawing on the recto and Verso of a single leaf from an unidentified manuscript from the Morgan library and included in the exhibition I don't know um well I I've warned you I'm very fascinated by this Leaf I've known it for a long time and I I it's very puzzling what it's shown so I want to give you my idea that's what so this is this is wrong of me Melanie helcom explains in the catalog the women who seem to radiate out uh from a central female figure of philosophy and hold various symbolic attributes for instance at the bottom center you can see a woman who holds a harp and that at the top on the other side o of the leaf if I got that right yes here at the top here um a woman points to the sun and the Stars so that suggests two of the liberal arts music and astronomy this was the Medieval University uh curriculum the the liberal the Seven Liberal Arts the woman on the bottom right here I'm afraid it is very difficult to see but you can go upstairs and puzzle it out for yourselves has been identified in various ways but none of them absolutely convincing to my mind I want tentatively to suggest that what she is holding could be a pot of paint into which she dips a paint brush this is the pot of paint according to me and this is the paint brush I have to admit it doesn't quite work it's not quite like a a paintbrush but but I don't know uh and so my suggestion is that the half naked satar this is the satar he's got goat food he's got a short tunic and he's got horns on his head so classical satar and he holds up a bunch of flowers my suggestion is that he's not a devil and Devils were often shown like like this but that he's a a representation of nature nature I suggest therefore uh is is is being painted and it is the beautiful natural world that's created by God in the gospels Jesus commanded his disciples to consider the lies of the field they labor not neither do they s yet Solomon in all his glory was not AR raay as one of these the artists can thus claim came to emulate though never to equal God by copying from nature in such a context a drawing cannot compete on quite equal terms with a painting nevertheless in terms of the hierarchy of value I have been suggesting for the lurgical books I would suggest it's their expensive materials and not a particular technique or a particular aesthetic which is valued and lastly the independent drawing prefix in our culture with the words old Master old Master drawing is associated by us as an art form with the Renaissance and later such great names come to mind as Leonardo da Vinci or Diora or rembrand these are artists in whom we recognize an individuality which as a quality of mind we label genius in no way is it my intention to disrespect these artists but I want to end with one more drawing which is not in the exhibition and and which was previously unknown to me and which is like so much medieval art Anonymous I think it's a truly amazing drawing it's on the past down of a 12th century manuscript of Gregory the Great's commentary on the Book of Job which was an essential text from monastic reading it's damaged unfortunately by wormholes from the wooden Boards of The Binding which is perhaps why it could not travel an inscription identifies it as job here's the description here so the half naked crouching woman is his grieving wife job's three comforters are not shown job lies on the dung Heap and is covered with the BL plague of boils which was the first of The Temptations inflicted on him by the devil The Book of Job in the King James version of the Hebrew Bible is considered one of the greatest used to be considered is considered one of the greatest pieces of Pros in the English language it conveys human suffering but also human endurance and courage and human Faith the power of this drawing which is without pretention without Framing and without color seems to me worthy of the great text it precedes it is in fact like so many of the other graphic Works in this superbly curated exhibition a masterpiece I Ur you to go and see the exhibition for yourselves thank you

Channel: The Met

Views: 39,732

Keywords: Metropolitan, Museum, of, art, mma_exhibition, mma_events, Medieval_art, drawings, maps, sketchbooks, manuscripts

Id: GTgkFWU3-Wk

Length: 64min 55sec (3895 seconds)

Published: Thu Oct 15 2009