Renaissance illumination
Renaissance illumination refers to the production of illuminated manuscripts in Western Europe in the late 15th and 16th centuries, influenced by the representational techniques and motifs of Renaissance painting. With the invention of printing, book painting did not disappear abruptly, but continued in certain luxury manuscripts, and even in some printed works. Illuminators of the period used techniques of perspective representation and iconographic themes specific to the period. Restricted to luxury works, this type of production declined in the second half of the 16th century, as engraving became increasingly competitive.
Characteristics
New scripts and decorations
At the beginning of the 15th century, humanist scholars developed a new script. It was inspired by Romanesque manuscripts of the 11th and 12th centuries, which in turn were inspired by Carolingian texts of the 9th century. The first manuscript written in this script is probably one of the works of Catullus from Poggio Bracciolini in Florence about 1400–1402.At the same time, new initial decorations were created, also inspired by the Carolingian manuscripts, and known as the bianchi girari. Composed of white scrolls decorated with flattened knots, trilobes, and palmettes, they are usually set against a red, blue, yellow, or green background.
The same manuscript by Poggio Bracciolini was the first to use this type of script. These designs were later used to decorate the borders of the pages, with putti, portraits, animals, and other increasingly naturalistic plants.
This type of decoration is characteristic of Italian Renaissance illumination of the 15th century that eventually disappeared from Italy by the end of the century.
New materials and techniques
With the development of drawing in the 15th century, quill and ink illuminations gradually began to compete with painted miniatures. As the use of paper increased, more and more manuscripts were written and decorated on this material, although it did not completely replace parchment.Types of works
The works produced had to stand out from the printed competition, as production was increasingly confined to a luxury clientele.The humanism of the time led to a renewed demand for texts from Greco-Roman antiquity. A considerable number of manuscripts by Virgil, Suetonius, and Cicero were decorated and also the original Greek texts by Homer and Aristotle were copied and decorated.
The Book of Hours, the star book of the late Gothic period, continued to be produced but was printed in standardized forms, mostly for use in Rome. Some illuminators were also printers, such as Jean Pichore, who mass-produced printed religious works while continuing to supply an aristocratic clientele with luxurious manuscripts. Still, some collectors commissioned exceptional manuscripts. The Farnese Hours of Cardinal Farnese, painted by Giulio Clovio in Italy between 1537 and 1546, and the Heures d'Anne de Montmorency in France are the most recent examples.
Many works from this period are also composed entirely of illustrations, although we do not know the precise purpose for which they were most often intended. This is the case of Histoire d'amour sans paroles, now in the Musée Condé.
Production centers
Italy
The diversity of the artistic centers of Italian Renaissance illumination reflects its political fragmentation. While in Lombardy the tradition of l'enluminure gothique, exemplified by the Master of the Vitae Imperatorum, endured for a very long time, it was in Padua that the new style first appeared and flourished. Here, from the 1430s onwards, a group of "archaeological" humanists took a particular interest in ancient manuscripts, drawing inspiration from ancient motifs to create new decorations, dyeing parchment purple and creating frontispieces in the form of classical monuments. The calligraphers Felice Feliciano and Bartolomeo Sanvito, as well as Andrea Mantegna himself, were among the artists who contributed to the renewal of this art.Although no extant manuscript is attributed to Mantegna himself, he undoubtedly influenced many illuminators in the rest of Italy. In particular, he influenced the brothers-in-law Leonardo and Giovanni Bellini in Venice, but also Girolamo de'Corradi, who worked in Mantua and Siena, where he decorated several cathedral choir books, and finally in Florence. Other centers of production were Ferrara, where the d'Este family commissioned numerous works, including the Borso d'Este Bible, and Urbino, where Federico III da Montefeltro enriched his library with a Bible and a copy of the Divine Comedy.