Strictly speaking, the term only applies to manuscript paintings if they are heightened in gold and silver. The texts of some Ancient Egyptian papyri were interspersed with illustrations. The Codex, a book bound in sheets, first appeared in the 4th century A.D. and provided opportunities for a new art, since text and illustrations were kept separate. The earliest illuminated manuscripts belong exclusively to the region around the Mediterranean (Itala MS., Berlin; Iliad Ambrosiana, Milan).
The earliest illuminated manuscripts north of the Alps date from the 7th century. PreCarolingian illumination (7th and 8th cent.) mostly absorbed late classic Eastern and Byzantine influences and produced some works of the highest order, especially in the British Isles (Hiberno-Saxon illumination: Book of Kells, Lindisfarne Gospels, Book of Durrow).
The great impetus to all forms of art and scholarship received under Charlemagne also influenced the illuminator’s art. Different schools, such as the Aachen Palace School, which was close to the Imperial court, and the schools connected with various abbeys, such as the Rheims, Tours, Metz, Corbie and Canterbury schools, based their work generally on earlier models; these, however, they were often able to transform in a very original manner. In the Ottonian age, which had witnessed the gradual development of a linear style, the illuminator’s art reached new heights. The works of the Reichenau School (The Evangeliary of Otto III, the Book of Pericopes of Henry II) and manuscripts from Henry II’s capital Regensburg, from Echternach, St Gall, Hildesheim and Fulda, are amongst the finest examples.
The scriptoria — as illuminators’ workshops are called — of southern and northern France produced an equally vivid art (for example, the St Armand and St Omer schools in the Meuse region). At the same time, the Winchester School flourished in England ( Winchester Bible, Grimbald Gospels) and in Italy the school of the Benedictine abbey of Monte Cassino which was in close contact with the Eastern Empire. A number of important local scriptoria developed during the Romanesque period.
The strict division into text and illustrations was only abandoned during the Gothic, when the hitherto customary borders to the miniatures also became gradually rarer. This change was largely initiated by the Paris school (Psalter of St Louis) and the schools of northern France. Secular scriptoria now appeared and secular subjects like poems, chronicles, etc. (Codex Manesse, Heidelberg) became increasingly popular.
The Burgundian miniatures of the early 15th century show a realistic treatment of space and landscape (‘The Limbourg brothers’ “Les trés riches heures du Duc de Berry”). The Brothers van Eyck and Jan Fouquet took this naturalism further and applied it to panel painting. With the invention of printing, book illumination quickly lost its importance. Outside Europe, we find the miniaturist’s art developed in the Islamic world to a high degree from the 12th century onwards (Baghdad school).
Secular themes were used almost exclusively. Persian miniatures of the 15th to 17th centuries (e. g. Herat School) and Indian miniatures of the Muslim Mughal Empire ( 16th cent.), too, are amongst the most famous works of their kind. Illuminated manuscripts also survived from the Ancient American civilisations of the Mixtecs, the Aztecs and the Maya.
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