Descrizione
The period considered here witnessed an explosion in the range of texts that were deemed worthy of illustration, extending far beyond the usual liturgical and devotional material to include works of science, medicine, law, philosophy, history and literature in verse and prose, offering a wealth of material for comparative study which is only beginning to be explored in modern scholarship. More is known than in earlier periods about who commissioned fine manuscripts and from whom. This book is organized according to production in regional centres based on stylistic analysis and by Comparative Tables of some the most fully illustrated types of book, together with Lists of the Producers and Patrons known by name. In Part I introductory material and summary lists are followed by the Catalogue of select manuscripts made in the North (Paris and the Province of Sens, Normandy, and the Province of Reims). Part II continues the Catalogue with clusters of manuscripts made for use in the East, South-East, South-West, West and Centre, regions far less known and studied than Paris and the North but where important centres produced not only specialist books, like law in Toulouse and medicine in Montpellier, but a range of other kinds of texts as well. As in the North, stylistic links among books also suggest that artists were often itinerant and that patrons might place commissions at centres far from where they lived. Iconographical Tables introduce a comparative approach to some of the popular liturgical and devotionial texts illustrated in the period-the Bible in Latin and French, Gospel Books, the Apocalypse, the Psalter and the Book of Hours, and to some notable vernacular texts-the Roman d’Alexandre in prose, the Ars d’amour de vertu et de boneurté, the Roman de Sydrach, the Roman de la rose, the Vie de saint Denis, the Trésor of Brunetto Latini, and history and law in Latin, with the Speculum historiale of Vincent of Beauvais and the Decretum of Gratian. Selected illustrations complement both Catalogue and Tables.
