Illumination: the art of "lighting up" a page through the use of illustration to break up text and make it more comprehensible.
'Illuminated Manuscripts And Their Makers' describes the extraordinary collective skill and artistry that went into the making of these medieval masterpieces and features pages from the finest examples in the collections of the V&A, some never published before.
Illuminated manuscripts are widely recognised as among the most beautiful objects of the western world. This is a book about their making: about the many talents involved in producing the missals, books of hours, brevaries and bibles that astonish us still with their richness and beauty.
Illuminated manuscripts were collaborative productions, with different specialists contributing script, initials, borders, illustration, and binding to any work. Rowan Watson's study is both scholarly and rich in anecdote; he not only brings individual scribes and book dealers vividly to life but also throws light on the commercial and religious environments in which they worked, and on the cooperative working practices devised for their production.
The illustrations are drawn from the exceptional and largely unpublished collections of the V&A, and the text offers us an entirely new look at the subject, treating illumination as a key to the history of the period as much as an expression of medieval and Renaissance (and neo-Gothic) styles and sensibility.
