̽��ֱ�� of Cambridge - MINIARE (Manuscript Illumination: Non-Invasive Analysis Research and Expertise)

COLOUR: ̽��ֱ��art and science of illuminated manuscripts

sjr81 — Fri, 29 Jul 2016 23:01:49 +0000

̽��ֱ��majority of the exhibits are from the Museum’s own rich collections, and those from the founding bequest of Viscount Fitzwilliam in 1816 can never leave the building and can only be seen at the Museum. For the first time, the secrets of master illuminators and the sketches hidden beneath the paintings will be revealed in a major exhibition presenting new art historical and scientific research.

Spanning the 8th to the 17th centuries, the 150 manuscripts and fragments in COLOUR: ̽��ֱ��Art and Science of Illuminated Manuscripts guide us on a journey through time, stopping at leading artistic centres of medieval and Renaissance Europe. Exhibits highlight the incredible diversity of the Fitzwilliam’s collection: including local treasures, such as the Macclesfield Psalter made in East Anglia c.1330-1340, a leaf with a self-portrait made by the Oxford illuminator William de Brailes c.1230-1250, and a medieval encyclopaedia made in Paris c.1414 for the Duke of Savoy.

Four years of cutting-edge scientific analysis and discoveries made at the Fitzwilliam have traced the creative process from the illuminators’ original ideas through their choice of pigments and painting techniques to the completed masterpieces.

“Leading artists of the Middle Ages and early Renaissance did not think of art and science as opposing disciplines,” said curator, Dr Stella Panayotova, Keeper of Manuscripts and Printed Books. “Instead, drawing on diverse sources of knowledge, they conducted experiments with materials and techniques to create beautiful works that still fascinate us today.”

Merging art and science, COLOUR shares the research of MINIARE (Manuscript Illumination: Non-Invasive Analysis, Research and Expertise), an innovative project based at the Fitzwilliam. Collaborating with scholars from the ̽��ֱ�� of Cambridge and international experts, the Museum’s curators, scientists and conservators have employed pioneering analytical techniques to identify the materials and methods used by illuminators.

“This has been an exciting project,” said research scientist, Dr Paola Ricciardi. “By combining imaging and spectroscopic analysis — methods more commonly associated with remote sensing and analytical chemistry — and by exploring such a diverse range of manuscripts, we can begin to understand how illuminators actually worked.”

“A popular misconception is that all manuscripts were made by monks and contained religious texts, but from the 11th century onwards professional scribes and artists were increasingly involved in a thriving book trade, producing both religious and secular texts. Scientific examination has revealed that illuminators sometimes made use of materials associated with other media, such as egg yolk, which was traditionally used as a binder by panel painters.”

Other discoveries include pigments rarely associated with manuscript illumination – such as the first ever example of smalt detected in a Venetian manuscript. Smalt, obtained by grinding blue glass, was found in a Venetian illumination book made c.1420. Evidently, the artist who painted it had close links with the famed glassmakers of Murano. This example predates by half a century the documented use of smalt in Venetian easel paintings.

Analyses of sketches lying beneath the paint surfaces, and of later additions and changes to paintings help to shed light on manuscripts and their owners. One French prayer book, made c.1430, was adapted over three generations to reflect the personal circumstances and dynastic anxieties of a succession of aristocratic women.

Adam and Eve were originally shown naked in an ABC commissioned c.1505 by the French Queen, Anne of Brittany (1476-1514) for her five-year-old daughter. However, a later owner, offended by the nudity, gave Eve a veil and Adam a skirt. Infrared imaging techniques and mathematical modelling have made it possible to reconstruct the original composition without harming the manuscript.

̽��ֱ��Museum’s treasures will be displayed alongside carefully selected loans — celebrated manuscripts from Cambridge libraries as well as other institutions in the UK and overseas. These include an 8th century Gospel Book from Corpus Christi College, the ̽��ֱ�� Library’s famous Life of Edward the Confessor, magnificent Apocalypses from Trinity College and Lambeth Palace, London, and a unique model book from Göttingen ̽��ֱ��.

Visitors will be encouraged to make their own discoveries in the exhibition galleries and online through a new, free digital resource: ILLUMINATED: Manuscripts in the Making. With hundreds of high resolution digital images and infrared photographs, this interactive, cross-disciplinary resource offers users in-depth information on the manuscripts’ contents, patrons, cultural and historical contexts, as well as scientific data relating to artists’ techniques and materials.

With over 300 illustrations in full colour, the authoritative exhibition catalogue encompasses subjects as diverse as the trade in pigments, painting techniques, the medieval science of optics and modern-day forgeries. Catalogue entries and essays by leading experts offer readers insight into all aspects of colour from the practical application of pigments to its symbolic meaning.

“We are delighted to be presenting this exhibition in our bicentenary year,” said director, Tim Knox. “Ten years ago ̽��ֱ��Cambridge Illuminations was the Museum’s first ever record-breaking exhibition, attracting over 80,000 visitors. People were enchanted by the remarkable beauty and delicacy of the manuscripts. I am convinced that our bicentenary visitors will again be equally inspired by the superb illuminations collected and treasured at the Fitzwilliam for 200 years, and will value this rare opportunity to find out how they were made and how we are preserving them for the future.”

COLOUR: ̽��ֱ��Art and Science of Illuminated Manuscripts will run during the second half of the Fitzwilliam’s bicentenary year, from 30 July to 30 December 2016. Admission is free.

Some of the finest illuminated manuscripts in the world – treasures combining gold and precious pigments – will go on display today in celebration of the Fitzwilliam Museum’s bicentenary.

Leading artists of the Middle Ages and early Renaissance did not think of art and science as opposing disciplines.

Stella Panayotova

All images © ̽��ֱ��Fitzwilliam Museum, Cambridge

Book of Hours, Use of Rome, ̽��ֱ��Three Living and the Three Dead, Western France, c.1490-1510

̽��ֱ��text in this work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License. For image use please see separate credits above.

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Illuminating art’s history

sc604 — Thu, 19 Feb 2015 06:00:00 +0000

Faced with the prospect of his rapidly approaching nuptials on 29 October 1442, and with no wedding gift purchased for his bride-to-be, Francis I of Brittany (1414–1450) did what many of us have done at some point: he ‘re-gifted’. He took something that was already in his possession and gave it to someone else.

But this was no ordinary gift: it was an illuminated manuscript, made for Francis’ first wife, Yolande of Anjou, who had died in 1440. Francis had it altered and presented it to his new bride, Isabella Stuart, daughter of James I. ̽��ֱ��portrait of his first wife was covered with that of Isabella and an image of St Catherine was added, using cheaper pigments. Then, when Francis was made a duke, the portrait was painted over yet again to give Isabella a coronet.

Art historians have written volumes on the Hours of Isabella Stuart over the last century, but a cross-disciplinary Cambridge project is using a variety of imaging techniques to uncover this story of re-gifting. ̽��ֱ��team’s work is challenging previous assumptions about this and many other manuscripts, helping them to see and understand medieval painting and illumination in new and unexpected ways.

Combining research in the arts, humanities, sciences and technology, MINIARE (Manuscript Illumination: Non-Invasive Analysis, Research and Expertise) currently focuses on uncovering the secrets of medieval art, but it is anticipated that many of the imaging techniques they are adapting may be used to study other types of art, from a range of different periods.

̽��ֱ��project is led by Dr Stella Panayotova, Keeper of Manuscripts and Printed Books at the Fitzwilliam Museum, and Professor Stephen Elliott of the Department of Chemistry, who are working with colleagues from across the ̽��ֱ�� and around the world.

“Working in a truly cross-disciplinary way can benefit art history, scientific research and visual culture in general, while pushing technology forward at the same time,” said Panayotova. “Thanks to the imaging techniques we’ve been using, we can see things in these manuscripts that we couldn’t see before.”

Much of what we know about illuminated manuscripts comes from art-historical analysis and circumstantial evidence. Since they are so delicate and the layers of pigment are so thin, manuscripts are seriously compromised by taking samples, which is common practice for the analysis of panel or fresco paintings. To gather hard evidence about how these manuscripts were made, while preserving them, non-invasive techniques are required.

“For our team, it was about finding new applications for existing techniques, and pushing them far beyond current boundaries in order to analyse the very thin layers of a manuscript,” said Elliott. “Part of our research is in the area of medical diagnostics and environmental sensing, where we analyse materials in very thin layers, which is not so different from analysing a painting. So we could certainly see what the problems were.”

Using a combination of imaging techniques, including photomicroscopy, visible and infrared imaging at multiple wavelengths, reflectance imaging spectroscopy and optical coherence tomography, the MINIARE team is able to peer through the layers of a painting to uncover its history, as in the case of the Hours of Isabella Stuart.

“We do have to adapt conventional analytical techniques to make them safe to use on something as fragile as an illuminated manuscript,” said conservation scientist Dr Paola Ricciardi. “For instance, Raman spectroscopy is a brilliant technique, but it’s a challenge to use it on a manuscript as we tend to use one-hundredth of the laser power that we would on a less fragile object.”

̽��ֱ��technological challenge for the MINIARE team is making sure the imaging technology is non-invasive enough to keep the manuscript safe, but still sensitive enough to get an accurate result. Many of the imaging tools that the team use are in fact not cameras, but scanners that acquire a spectrum at each point as they scan an entire object. ̽��ֱ��resulting ‘spectral image cubes’ can then provide information about the types of materials that were used, as well as the ability to see different layers present in the manuscript.

Combining these non-invasive imaging techniques not only helps the researchers to distinguish between artists by analysing which materials they used and how they employed them, but also helps them to learn more about the technical know-how that these artists possessed.

“Many of the artists we’re looking at didn’t just work on manuscripts,” said Panayotova. “Some of them were panel painters or fresco painters, while others also worked in glass, textiles or metal. Identifying the ways in which they used the same materials in different media, or transferred materials and techniques across media, offers a whole new way of looking at art.”

For example, Ricciardi has found evidence for the use of smalt, a finely ground blue glass, as a pigment in an early 15th-century Venetian manuscript made in Murano. ̽��ֱ��use of a glass-based pigment is not unexpected given the proximity of the Murano glass factories, but this illuminator was working half a century before any other Venetian easel painter whose works are known to contain smalt.

Another unexpected material that the MINIARE team has encountered is egg yolk, which was a common paint binder for panel paintings, but not recommended for manuscript illumination – instead, egg white or gum were normally used. By making a hyperspectral reflectance map of the manuscript, the researchers were able to gather information about the pigments and binders, and determine that some manuscript painters were most likely working across a variety of media.

̽��ֱ��techniques that the team are developing and refining for manuscripts will also see application in other types of art. “All of the imaging techniques we’re using on the small scale of medieval manuscripts need to be scalable, in order that we can apply them to easel paintings and many other types of art,” said Dr Spike Bucklow of the Hamilton Kerr Institute. “It’s an opportunity to see how disciplines relate to each other.”

MINIARE (www.miniare.org) involves the Fitzwilliam Museum, Hamilton Kerr Institute, Departments of Chemistry, Physics, History of Art, History and Philosophy of Science, and Applied Mathematics and Theoretical Physics, as well as the Victoria & Albert Museum, Durham ̽��ֱ��, Nottingham Trent ̽��ֱ��, Antwerp ̽��ֱ��, Getty Conservation Institute, J Paul Getty Museum, National Gallery of Art in Washington DC and SmartDrive Ltd.

Inset image – top: Macroscopic X-ray fluorescence imaging has allowed to prove the presence of smalt, a cobalt-containing glass pigment, mixed with ultramarine blue in selected areas of this early 15th century manuscript fragment painted by the Master of the Murano gradual; Left: Fitzwilliam Museum, Marlay Cutting It 18; Right: Cobalt distribution map; Credit: S. Legrand and K. Janssens, Department of Chemistry, ̽��ֱ�� of Antwerp.

Inset image – bottom: Hyperspectral reflectance imaging in the visible and near-infrared range confirms evidence for the use of egg yolk as a paint binder only in figurative areas within the decorated initials in the Missal of Cardinal Angelo Acciaiuoli, painted in Florence ca. 1404; Left: Fitzwilliam Museum, MS 30, fol 1r (detail); Centre: RGB composite obtained from the hyperspectral image cube; Right: egg yolk distribution map, showing its use to paint the figure of Christ with the exclusion of his ultramarine blue robe; Credit: J. K. Delaney and K. Dooley, National Gallery of Art, Washington DC.

Scientific imaging techniques are uncovering secrets locked in medieval illuminated manuscripts – including those of a thrifty duke.

Identifying the ways in which they used the same materials in different media, or transferred materials and techniques across media, offers a whole new way of looking at art

Stella Panayotova

Fitzwilliam Museum

Francis I of Brittany 'regifted' the Book of Hours to his second wife Isabella after having his first wife painted over

̽��ֱ��text in this work is licensed under a Creative Commons Licence. If you use this content on your site please link back to this page. For image rights, please see the credits associated with each individual image.

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