Miniature Painting

Illumination, from the Latin minium meaning red lead (triplumbic tetroxide), has a long history that was launched by the Egyptians. However, it is in the late Roman antiquity that the technique of painting on parchment (often vellum), using a red font, acquired a considerable importance. The development of manuscripts produced in the early Christian monasteries, and the popularization of private books of hours, along with the later trend of miniature portraits, drove illumination to become one of the most popular types of art forms of the Renaissance and the early modern period in Europe. Some European workshops eventually built their reputation on this kind of production. In Asian and Arabic cultures, where the same phenomenon happened, the art of illumination has its roots in Chinese tradition and Persian miniature, both of which play a great part in the fortune of Arabic decorations until the eighteenth century.

Brief History

Miniatures, codices, and books are intrinsically linked. The framework of illumination is indeed concomitant with the appearance of codices, then books (manuscript and occasionally print) in Western culture. But the real origin of miniature painting can be dated from the use of papyrus in ancient Egypt, for example, the Book of the Dead (1275 BCE) and the Romance Papyrus (c. first and second century BCE).

The first golden age of miniature has to be identified with the development of codices in the late antiquity. The Ambrosian Iliad, a rare Byzantine manuscript from the fifth century, as well as the Vergilius Vaticanus and the Vergilius Romanus, dated from the same century, contain extensive illuminated pages. All these miniatures are made on vellum, the most popular medium during this period and the Middle Ages in Europe. Other early artefacts show the variety of miniaturist’s interest and qualifications all around Europe: such are the Vienna Dioscurides, the oldest illustrated treatise on birds (c. sixth century), the British Benedictional of St. Æthelwold or the Book of Kells, two religious codices respectively dated from the tenth and the ninth centuries.

Illuminated manuscripts flourished in the late medieval period and Renaissance, more particularly in cities like Paris, Padua, Florence, and Bruges, where very structured workshops produced books of hours, biblical manuscripts, choir books, and decorated classical texts and printed books. From these artistic and humanistic centers arose some milestones of miniature: the Stavelot Bible (1093–1097), the Wenceslas Bible (1390–1400), the Très Riches Heures du Duc de Berry (1411–1416), Borso d’Este’s Bible (1455–1461), Grimani’s Breviary (1510–1520), and the Farnese Hours (1537–1546).

In ancient China, Japan, and Persia, miniature can be seen as the major bi-dimensional art production. Its whole history is linked to the use of paper, invented in China (c. second century BCE) and exported to the Middle East, on which the artists, calligraphers (scribes), and painters worked together to create exquisite literary and scientific objects. The Treatise on the Stars written by Al-Souphi is said to be the oldest work of this kind to have survived—c. 1009 BCE—while many other masterpieces were produced during the twelfth and thirteenth centuries—Kitâb al-Diryâq (1198–1199), the Maqâmât al-Harîrî Schefer (1237), both made in northern Iraq, the De Materia Medica (1229) enriched by about five hundred depictions of plants, the Story of Bayad and Riyad, a rare thirteenth century manuscript made in Sevilla during the Islamic Dominion. The sixteenth century gave birth to other astonishing illuminated manuscripts, not only in the former Persian centers (The Shahnama of Shah Tahmasp, 1522–35), but also in the Ottoman empire (The Book of Felicity, 1582) and the Mughal Indian empire (The Adventures of Hamza, 1557–82; originally composed of more than 1,400 miniatures). In the Japanese tradition, the emaki-monos, or handscrolls, popularized the epic achievements of great soldiers, the court life, or more singularly depicted natural scenes for more than five centuries.

Apart from the manuscripts, miniaturists also satisfied the request of private collectors, from the emperor to the poet, providing them with miniature portraits, sometimes painted on ivory. Very likely invented in France and England in the early sixteenth century, this form had a longer period of production than the illumination of manuscripts, ending approximately at the end of the ninteenth century. Jean Fouquet (c.1450), Simon Bening (c.1483–1561), and Hans Holbein (1497–1543) are perhaps the launchers of this tradition; John Smart, in the late eighteenth century exported it to India.

Overview

While surface tends to change regarding the region, the period, and the culture of the miniaturists, technique did not really differ. The process of illumination is better known since the twentieth century. X-ray imaging allowed art historians to study the different stages of miniature making. Thanks to other surviving documents—unfinished sheets for example—researchers can detail artists’ methods of work. The manuscript’s illumination is divided in three moments (text, decoration, illuminated initials) both in Western and Arabic traditions. The technique is generally distemper (or tempera in Italian) in Western art—additions of ink, pencil, gold, silver—while ink is more frequent in Japanese miniatures.

The exquisite nature of miniatures generated passion and interest from some collectors and patrons who devoted their attention almost exclusively to miniature. In Renaissance Italy, families such the Este in Ferrara and the Sforza in Milan, Federico of Montefeltro (1422–1482), and Venetian connoisseurs, built up impressive collections of codices, which are part of the Vatican Library, the Biblioteca Estense, or the Biblioteca Marciana. In Hungary, Matthias Corvinus (1443–1490) funded the Biblioteca Corviniana (in c. 1485) to take care of his almost 2,000 codices, while in Istanbul, Murad III (1546–1595) was perhaps the greatest collector of codices in Ottoman history.

Bibliography

Adamova, Adel. Persian Painting: Illustrated Manuscripts and Miniature Painting. London: Thames, 2015. Print.

Alexander, Jonathan J. G., ed. The Painted Pages. Italian Renaissance Book Illumination 1450–1550. London: Prestel, 1994. Print.

Brown, Michelle. Understanding Illuminated Manuscripts: A Guide to Technical Terms. Los Angeles: J. Paul Getty Museum, 1994. Print.

Cahill, James. Pictures for Use and Pleasure: Vernacular Painting in High Qing China. Berkeley: U of California P, 2010. Print.

Fırat, Begüm Özden. Encounters with the Ottoman Miniature. London: Tauris, 2015. Print.

Mason, Penelope E. History of Japanese Art. New York: Prentice, 2004. Print.

Nel Segno del Corvo: libri e miniature della biblioteca di Mattia Corvino re d’Ungheria (1443–1490). Modena: Il Bulino, 2002. Print.

Pappe, Bernd, Juliane Schmieglitz-Otten, Gerrit Walczak, eds. European Portrait Miniatures: Artists, Functions and Collections. Petersberg: Imhof, 2014. Print.