A perennial favorite, late 16th-century artist Joris Hoefnagel produced highly-detailed naturalistic images of fruit, insects, flowers, and even shells and crustaceans to adorn a book of calligraphy samples completed for Emperor Rudolph II. The most famous and elaborate example of an illuminator’s attempt to rival nature is the Model Book for Calligraphy. Small plantings of daisies also bloom around golden banners with her personal motto: Bien en Adviegne (“May good come of it”). The flowers appear to grow around the initials CM, shown connected by a love-knot and representing her marriage to Duke Charles the Bold. In two books from her collection- The Visions of the Knight Tondal and The Vision of the Soul of Guy de Thurno-the illuminator Simon Marmion included a floral reference to her name in the form of bunches of daisies (called marguerites in French). Margaret of York, Duchess of Burgundy, was an avid patron of scribes and illuminators in the 15th century. Manuscript owners could also personalize their books by adding philosophical sayings or symbols, and flowers offered beautiful and subtle possibilities. Scenes from the life of Christ are framed by trellises, withered branches, or potted flowers. The calendar presents a veritable garden of daisies, violets, roses, forget-me-nots, foxgloves, and bluebells. In a manuscript known as the Katherine Hours (named for a previous owner), every page-turn reveals a world of flowers and insects. A dragonfly and a tiny goldfinch are also represented, almost as if they’re reading the text along with the human viewer.

Stylized white acanthus leaves merge into naturalistic branches surrounded by thistle and colorful blooms that look as if they’ve landed haphazardly on the brilliant gold border. This (now detached) leaf from one such book shows the great variety of creatures that could populate manuscripts of this type. Digital image courtesy of Getty’s Open Content Program Tempera colors, gold, and ink on parchment, 9 1/8 × 6 9/16 in. Saint Clara with a Monstrance, about 1510–1520, Workshop of Master of the First Prayer Book of Maximilian. These kinds of scattered borders, which were widely used by illuminators for luxury devotional books, evolved from the more stylized florals of the early 15th century. The borders of late 15th and early 16th-century French and Flemish manuscripts teem with life: detailed botanical studies, creepy-crawly insects, and vine-ripened fruit frame the images, offering viewers a window onto an evergreen natural world. (Though separated by 400 years, the artists coincidentally lived just 50 miles from each other in France.) Both artists paid close attention to the tiniest of details. Here you can see the vibrancy of the iris in a manuscript from the 1400s, and in Vincent van Gogh’s Irises, painted in 1889. This moment is usually known as the Renaissance when artists began developing ways to make paintings and sculptures appear as true to the eye as possible.Īrtists have continued to use flowers to express spiritual ideals of quiet meditation or of an appreciation for beauty in everything around them, including the sometimes small or ephemeral elements of nature. Digital image courtesy of Getty’s Open Content Programīy the 1400s, illuminators really made books come to life. Tempera and gold leaf on parchment, 10 9/16 × 7 3/4 in. Initial V: Tobit Sleeping, about 1250–1262, Italian. These seemingly playful elements represented the need to toil and prune one’s behaviors for mental, physical, and spiritual care. By the year 1000, artists depicted human figures climbing and trimming the leaves of intricate initials, as in this small religious service book. The acanthus leaf letterforms in a Bible from the 800s were inspired by ancient Roman art (from sculpture to inscriptions to architecture). Getty Museum has numerous examples that span the Middle Ages and beyond. Throughout the history of the book, scribes and artists have incorporated nature into their creations. To bring some of this color into our own lives, we collected flowers and leaves to make our own living borders.

Flowers are blooming in Los Angeles, and although we are spending much more time at home than usual, many of us are finding opportunities to be outside in nature at a safe distance from others.Īs manuscript curators, we have long admired the remarkably naturalistic paintings of flowers and insects that fill the pages of books with color and life.

Illuminated manuscript borders floral