Illuminated Manuscripts

This article maintains that John Lydgate’s 'Testament' is not a rejection of his secular career but a literary palinode that attempts to impress a sense of coherence onto a diverse body of work. As the language of conversion, the repetitive litaneutical code at the end of the poem is vindicated by the earlier performance of poetic bravado. Lydgate’s textual piety, which I show to be indebted to the devotion to the Holy Name of Jesus, is paradoxically sustained by the displacement of prior secular forms. In a central gesture, the kneeling monk-poet presents his life’s work to God, who acts as his patron. Finally, I demonstrate that manuscript illuminations depicting a kneeling Lydgate confirm the reception of such a pose as simultaneously pious yet secular. As a result, I suggest that we view Lydgate not as a Chaucerian, but first and foremost as a poet dedicated to reconciling the writing of secular literature with a spiritual calling. From: The Chaucer Review Volume 49, Number 3, 2015 pp. 265-293 http://muse.jhu.edu/login?auth=0&type=summary&url=/journals/chaucer_review/v049/49.3.sobecki.html http://www.jstor.org/stable/10.5325/chaucerrev.49.3.issue-3

This dissertation is an exploration of the context surrounding the creation of a single painting, now in the National Gallery of Scotland in Edinburgh. I will begin with a general introduction to the painting, which I will refer to as the Edinburgh Madonna, including previous theories regarding the extraordinary trompe l’oeil frame. Following that, I have divided the context into two spheres, the devotional and the artistic. Leading with the devotional context, I will introduce the methods of piety as practiced in the fifteenth century, then discuss the specific penitential and ascetic tenor of devotion in Ferrara. Many of the unique artistic decisions made by the painter of the Edinburgh Madonna can be understood as responding to the demands of Ferrarese piety. Following contemplation of the Edinburgh Madonna as a devotional object, I will consider it as a painting produced in the context Ferrarese artistic production.
First, introducing another painting that, I will provide justification for believing, is by the artist of the Edinburgh Madonna, then by comparing specific aspects of the Edinburgh Madonna to other Ferrarese panel paintings. Finally I will consider the extraordinary conceptualisation of space in relation to manuscript illumination. In concord, these comparisons will provide an overall understanding of the decisions made by the painter in the creation of this extraordinary painting.

Two Byzantine VI century manuscripts known as Vienna Dioskurides and Vienna Genesis, held in the Austrian National Library at Vienna, were analysed with in situ non-invasive techniques. Raman spectroscopy, UV–Vis diffuse reflectance spectrophotometry with optic fibres and X-ray fluorescence spectrometry were used to characterise the palette of these early Middle Ages manuscripts. The analytical study was performed to have a better knowledge on the colourants used by ancient miniature painters, a subject known more on the basis of traditional sources (i.e. medieval treatises) than of analytical evidences. Indeed these illuminated manuscripts are, to the authors’ knowledge, among the oldest ever being analysed, so that the colourants found in them can be considered among the oldest evidences of their use. The main feature of Vienna Dioskurides and Vienna Genesis palettes is their richness, exemplified by the simultaneous presence of gold and ultramarine blue; in Vienna Dioskurides cinnabar is also present. Information regarding ultramarine blue is surprising, being the analytical evidence of the use of this precious pigment at least three centuries before its use in Western manuscripts, a feature justified by the fact that the Byzantine Empire was the dominant culture in early Middle Ages in the Mediterranean World. Other colourants include azurite and indigo, red lead, orpiment, red and yellow ochres, while a mixture of blue and yellow colourants, known as vergaut, was used to render green hues. Organic colourants were also used, such as madder and Tyrian purple, the latter employed to dye the parchment of Vienna Genesis.

The Nkaragrutʻiwn Tnōrinakan tełeacʻ is the name given to the collection of manuscripts which contains descriptions of monuments located in Palestine, primarily of which are considered Christian holy places. This collection closely resembles modern travel books or tourist guides to archeological sites. These manuscripts were compiled with the intent of acquainting Armenian pilgrims with the Sacred Shrines in the Holy Land during the 17th-18th centuries.
This particular Armenian manuscript is housed in the monastic library of the Mekhitarist Fathers in Vienna. It is a very interesting and important “guide book” richly illustrated and written by the monk Eremia of Adana at the Holy Sepulchre church in Jerusalem in 1697. The manuscript contains travel information regarding 80 sites, complete with pictorial compositions - colour images of the monasteries, cathedrals, churches, chapels, caves, mountains, rivers and lakes found in the areas near the site. Most of the depictions are of Christian holy places, but there a number of Jewish and Muslim sites as well. The pictorial programme begins with the illustration of the church of St. Nativity in Bethlehem and it finishes with the miniature of the cathedral of the Holy Sepulchre in Jerusalem at the end of codex. Eremia offers a comprehensive guided tour to each of these monuments which during his time, were scattered over the territory of Palestine. Many of these sites are preserved today.
The research results and achievements, contained in the following article, concerning Eremia’s miniatures are my discovery. The proposed subject has tremendous significance for Armenologists and Byzantinologists in the fields of Armenian miniature art and theology, iconography, geography, topography, archeology, and history of pilgrimage to the Holy Land.

In the last decades, the working methods of late medieval illuminators have been widely discussed by art historians and codicologists. Non-invasive analyses are able to characterise the painting methods of illuminators as well as investigate artistic collaborations among them. The aim of this study was to characterise the painting palettes and techniques of different artists who illuminated two leaves from an early fourteenth century manuscript. The analyses were carried out with non-invasive and portable techniques such as Energy Dispersive X-ray Fluorescence (EDXRF) spectrometry, Fiber Optics Reflectance Spectroscopy (FORS) and Raman spectroscopy. The paper highlights the differences among three rich and varied palettes and examines the pigments ultramarine, azurite, verdigris, earths, orpiment, red lead, vermillion, lead white, yellow lake, indigo, brazilwood and lac, used independently or in mixtures. We have demonstrated the effectiveness of non-invasive analyses as a tool to d...

I want to touch the Middle Ages. I want to hold all of the works of art in all the museums. I want to turn the pages, not by touching a screen or mouse in the Brit- ish Library's Turning The PagesTM app, but by touching vellum in the British Li- brary's reading room. I want to open and close the wings on altarpieces, to feel ivories warm in my hand, to drink from the Mérode Cup while achieving check- mate with the Lewis Chessmen. I have even been tempted, like John, to eat the occasional book (fig. 1). Lead paints (and laws) make this a bad idea. Some of this is impossible; some is not. With a bit of planning and funding and effort, I can get myself to the British Library, where the generous librarians allow me access to wonders. With the right letters of introduction and negotiations, I can gain access to other collections, other treasures, other experiences, but I will never drink from a medieval cup, I suspect. I am deeply fortunate to have the sorts of access I have, and...

Our article explores the bed as an object that projects notions of status, aspiration, decorum, and morality. We are interested in the economic and symbolic values that accrue to the bed, bedding, and the bedroom in late medieval England, as described in wills and household accounts, and as evoked in literary and artistic imagery. We situate our analysis in relation to literal and represented household beds, those associated with birth and inheritance and also those portrayed in images of death. “Childbed” and “deathbed” are terms that frame the human lifecycle. They also invoke the most important item of furniture in the premodern household. To Johan Bedell my servaunt . . . an honest whole complete bed and all other things therto belonging for a bedde.—John Goodwyn, 1522 (TNA Prob11/20/377) Take here hede and lerne howeȝ þou schalt make an honest bede and a good plesinge vnto god profitabel and worschipful vnto þi soule. (Take heed here and learn how you shall make an honest bed a...

The Sainte-Chapelle at Vic-le-Comte is one of the most important religious buildings surviving from the 16th century in the Auvergne. It was the last of ten French royal and ducal chapels founded, broadly following the precedent set by Louis IX’s foundation of the Parisian Sainte-Chapelle in 1248. The primary function of this, and the other Saintes-Chapelles, was to provide a dignified structure within which to house fragments of the Passion relics inherited from Louis IX. For their patrons, such foundations served as important public expressions of piety, advertised the patrons’ connections to the French crown, and simultaneously functioned as valuable diplomatic tools, encouraging important guests to venerate their relics. The Sainte-Chapelle at Vic-le-Comte has received limited scholarly attention, particularly in relation to its patron John Stuart, Duke of Albany, and his position as Regent of Scotland. This paper examines this foundation and its ambitious programme of decoratio...

Monstrous iconography was a major, even central, element of the visual arts throughout the entire medieval period, Early Christian through late Gothic, east and west, north and south. There are few—if any—medieval cultural traditions that do not rely on monstrous imagery for vital cultural functions. Within this catchall category, often defined through exclusion from all of the more clearly defined categories of the period, there is tremendous dynamism and variety, as well as great hermeneutic and epistemological potential. There have been a few attempts to define the monstrous, though the protean nature of the subject eludes final clarity.1 However, the study of the iconography of the monstrous was, until relatively recently, underdeveloped. It was a subject of interest within the period, but was not frequently discussed in secondary scholarship about the period. In this essay, we will provide a historiography of modern Monsters Studies, with particular attention to works addressin...

Our article explores the bed as an object that projects notions of status, aspiration, decorum, and morality. We are interested in the economic and symbolic values that accrue to the bed, bedding, and the bedroom in late medieval England, as described in wills and household accounts, and as evoked in literary and artistic imagery. We situate our analysis in relation to literal and represented household beds, those associated with birth and inheritance and also those portrayed in images of death. “Childbed” and “deathbed” are terms that frame the human lifecycle. They also invoke the most important item of furniture in the premodern household. To Johan Bedell my servaunt . . . an honest whole complete bed and all other things therto belonging for a bedde.—John Goodwyn, 1522 (TNA Prob11/20/377) Take here hede and lerne howeȝ þou schalt make an honest bede and a good plesinge vnto god profitabel and worschipful vnto þi soule. (Take heed here and learn how you shall make an honest bed a...

The Apollonius fragment of the National Széchényi Library, consisting of four leaves, is especially valuable for its uniquely rich secular narrative image cycle that appears to be a faithful rendering of its Late Antique model. Given the 38 unfinished pen-work drawings, preserved in the fragment, and about 70 further ones that seem to have been lost, this fragment is one of the most extensive secular narrative cycles of antique origin that have come down to us. This study seeks to explore various aspects of this unique fragment. It is examined together with its „mother codex” with which it constituted a single volume probably from the eleventh century up to the 1870s. This Virgil codex (Cod. Lat. 7) suggests through independent sorts of evidence that both manuscripts were copied in the scriptorium of the Benedictine monastery of Werden at the turn of the millennium and was kept in the library of the monastery up to the mid-fifteenth century when Gosswin Kempgyn de Nussia/Neuß (1420/1425–1483), professor at the university of Cologne acquired it. The manuscript was later taken to the library of the Lutheran convent of Sopron which later donated its manuscripts, including the Apollonius-Virgil volume, to the Hungarian National Museum in 1814. In addition to the provenance of the fragment, the circumstances of its production are also analyzed in detail, with a primary focus on Uffingus’ carmina figurata, transmitted only in the Virgil volume. The favorable reception of a Late Antique and Christianized adventure romance such as the Historia Apollonii Regis Tyri and its illustration cycle fits well the intellectual milieu of Ottonian monasticism in Werden, attesting the revival of classical literature and art. The use of the story and especially its illustrations is highlighted by the personal names of Werden origin that were copied probably by monastic students as mockery next to the figures of the plot represented in the illustrations. Moreover, the complete manuscript of the illustrated Apollonius fragment is reconstructed on the basis of codicological evidence. The entire text must have been copied on two pieces of binio and a bifolio and furnished with a smaller number of illustrations than Weitzmann assumed (not many more than a hundred). Despite its mediocre, but not dilettante quality, this extremely rich cycle deserves a primary position in the history of secular narrative book illustrations both in the context of Late Antique art and that of the Ottonian period. Finally, some examples illustrate that the editors of the Apollonius romance have neglected a considerable number of valuable readings which would give the Apollonius fragment a higher standing in the reconstruction of the text than previous scholarship has supposed.

In the last decades, the working methods of late medieval illuminators have been widely discussed by art historians and codicologists. Non-invasive analyses are able to characterise the painting methods of illuminators as well as investigate artistic collaborations among them. The aim of this study was to characterise the painting palettes and techniques of different artists who illuminated two leaves from an early fourteenth century manuscript. The analyses were carried out with non-invasive and portable techniques such as Energy Dispersive X-ray Fluorescence (ED-XRF) spectrometry, Fiber Optics Reflectance Spectroscopy (FORS) and Raman spectroscopy. The paper highlights the differences among three rich and varied palettes and examines the pigments ultramarine, azurite, verdigris, earths, orpiment, red lead, vermillion, lead white, yellow lake, indigo, brazilwood and lac, used independently or in mixtures. We have demonstrated the effectiveness of non-invasive analyses as a tool to ...

Based on a combination of research methods and traditions, this three-part study presents a survey of the present state of knowledge about the production and ownership of deluxe manuscripts in the late-medieval Netherlands. Part One is based on the analysis of a corpus of about 3,700 extant illustrated manuscripts produced between 1400 and 1550 in the (northern and southern) Low Countries. The composition of this corpus made it possible to glean general information about many aspects of manuscripts production, such as chronological and geographical distribution, the various kinds of texts, dimensions, the languages used, and the relationship with the production of printed books. Substantial consideration is given to the methodological problem of the extent to which we can state that what we are discussing is also a faithful reflection of what was originally produced. The cautious conclusion is that surviving illustrated manuscripts might represent 20% of all those originally made. C...

The illuminations in two Italian manuscripts are still a mystery today. Both manuscripts were based fully or partly on the Florentine Squarcialupi Codex (Florence, Biblioteca Medicea Laurenziana, Med. Pal. 87) dating from around 1410/15. With the help of a multi-analytical, non-destructive approach employing mobile instrumentation (XRF spectroscopy, visible reflectance spectroscopy and infrared reflectography), we examined the manuscripts Toronto, Thomas Fisher Rare Book Library, MSS 09700 and Düsseldorf, Kunstpalast, Inv. K 1925-67 for the first time with regard to their production processes. The identification of modern pigments allows them to be contextualized in illumination practices of the 19th century. Manuals of that time provide a wealth of information on specific illumination practices and the availability of writing and painting materials, which correlates with the actual artefacts.

Our article explores the bed as an object that projects notions of status, aspiration, decorum, and morality. We are interested in the economic and symbolic values that accrue to the bed, bedding, and the bedroom in late medieval England, as described in wills and household accounts, and as evoked in literary and artistic imagery. We situate our analysis in relation to literal and represented household beds, those associated with birth and inheritance and also those portrayed in images of death. “Childbed” and “deathbed” are terms that frame the human lifecycle. They also invoke the most important item of furniture in the premodern household. To Johan Bedell my servaunt . . . an honest whole complete bed and all other things therto belonging for a bedde.—John Goodwyn, 1522 (TNA Prob11/20/377) Take here hede and lerne howeȝ þou schalt make an honest bede and a good plesinge vnto god profitabel and worschipful vnto þi soule. (Take heed here and learn how you shall make an honest bed a...

Illuminated Dante Project, in collaboration with the Advanced Course in History and Philology of the Manuscript and Ancient Book, has invited Lieve Watteeuw, KU Leuven, and Hendrik Hameeuw, KU Leuven, to hold a workshop/seminar limited to the students of the Advanced Course on 20-21 May 2019 at the Girolamini Library of Naples. On that occasion, Watteeuw and Hameeuw will test for the very first time in Italy the technology of Microdome on some manuscripts of the Library, and in particular on the ancient Dante manuscript known as "Codice Filippino". A restricted group of experts and researchers in the domains of philology, codicology, history of art, book restoration and conservation, will take part in this intervention. The outcomes of this research, along with the perspectives of KU Leuven Book Heritage Lab’s partnership with both Illuminated Dante Project and the Advanced Course, will be publicly communicated on May 21, 2019 at 15.00 at Sala Ex Cataloghi, Department of Humanities, University of Naples "Federico II". This meeting will be open to anyone. _______________ Lieve Watteeuw is art historian at KU Leuven and conservator-restorator of books and manuscripts since 1989. She is head of the Book Heritage Lab and she is coordinating the 3Pi-project (Diagnosis of Papyrus-Parchment-File Manuscripts through Advanced Imaging) and RICH (Reflectance Imaging for Cultural Heritage). Hendrik Hameeuw is assyriologist and Near Eastern archeologist at KU Leuven; he is an expert in Scientific Imaging and a member of the Book Heritage Lab.

In the last decades, the working methods of late medieval illuminators have been widely discussed by art historians and codicologists. Non-invasive analyses are able to characterise the painting methods of illuminators as well as investigate artistic collaborations among them. The aim of this study was to characterise the painting palettes and techniques of different artists who illuminated two leaves from an early fourteenth century manuscript. The analyses were carried out with non-invasive and portable techniques such as Energy Dispersive X-ray Fluorescence (ED-XRF) spectrometry, Fiber Optics Reflectance Spectroscopy (FORS) and Raman spectroscopy. The paper highlights the differences among three rich and varied palettes and examines the pigments ultramarine, azurite, verdigris, earths, orpiment, red lead, vermillion, lead white, yellow lake, indigo, brazilwood and lac, used independently or in mixtures. We have demonstrated the effectiveness of non-invasive analyses as a tool to ...

Our article explores the bed as an object that projects notions of status, aspiration, decorum, and morality. We are interested in the economic and symbolic values that accrue to the bed, bedding, and the bedroom in late medieval England, as described in wills and household accounts, and as evoked in literary and artistic imagery. We situate our analysis in relation to literal and represented household beds, those associated with birth and inheritance and also those portrayed in images of death. “Childbed” and “deathbed” are terms that frame the human lifecycle. They also invoke the most important item of furniture in the premodern household. To Johan Bedell my servaunt . . . an honest whole complete bed and all other things therto belonging for a bedde.—John Goodwyn, 1522 (TNA Prob11/20/377) Take here hede and lerne howeȝ þou schalt make an honest bede and a good plesinge vnto god profitabel and worschipful vnto þi soule. (Take heed here and learn how you shall make an honest bed a...

The Nkaragrutʻiwn Tnōrinakan teleacʻ is the name given to the collection of manuscripts containing descriptions of monuments located in Palestine, primarily those considered Christian holy places. Closely resembling modern travel books or tourist guides to archeological sites, these manuscripts were compiled with the intent of acquainting Armenian pilgrims with the Sacred Shrines in the Holy Land during the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. One particular Armenian manuscript, housed in the monastic library of the Mekhitarist Fathers in Vienna, is a very interesting and important “guidebook”, richly illustrated and written by the monk Eremia of Adana at the Holy Sepulchre Church in Jerusalem in 1697. The manuscript contains travel information regarding 80 sites, complete with 81 pictorial compositions. Most of the depictions are of Christian holy places, but there are also a number of representations of Jewish and Muslim sites. Eremia offers a comprehensive guided tour of each of these monuments which during his time were scattered over the territory of Palestine, with many still being in existence today. The proposed subject has tremendous significance for Armenologists and Byzantinologists in the fields of miniature art, iconography, geography, topography, archeology, and history of pilgrimage to the Holy Land.

Reading the Medieval Book examines one of the most important epic poems of thirteenth-century Germany and its redaction in a richly illustrated manuscript created just fifty-five years after the poem's composition. Starkey's book reveals that the Munich-Nuremberg manuscript (c. 1270) of Wolfram von Eschenbach's Willehalm (c. 1215) was compiled with both oral performance and the written medium in mind. Wolfram contrasts the visual language of the court with the auditory one of the battlefield, drawing attention to the position of the narrator and the interpretive frame that he provides. The manuscript reflects Wolfram's clear interest in the oral and visual communication that played such a dominant role in court society of the thirteenth century. Starkey argues that rather than merely depicting the events of Willehalm's plot, the Munich-Nuremberg artists also visualized nuances and shifts in the text that may otherwise have become lost when the oral text was commi...

Una geografia artistica che attraversa i secoli, abbraccia i temi iconografici, incrocia i ricordi e trova uno spazio privilegiato nelle variegate relazioni, negli scambi e nelle interferenze tra le espressioni artistiche del Nord e del Sud Europa. Uno sguardo verso nord raccoglie contributi inediti di alcuni dei più importanti studiosi italiani e stranieri, focalizzando l’attenzione su un metodo, un atteggiamento, uno sguardo comune capace di unificare quanto sembra disperso e variegato. Lo sguardo è quello di Caterina Virdis Limentani, collega e maestra, studiosa raffinata capace di sondare le molteplici possibilità di conoscenza delle opere d’arte e imporre una visione in grado di dilatare la concezione di “arte europea”.

L'intervento è frutto di un lavoro ampiamente condiviso e a lungo discusso da entrambi gli autori, la prima parte si deve ad Andrea Severi, mentre la seconda a Paolo Cova. Nella prima si analizzano le testimonianze letterarie dell'Umanesimo bolognese in relazione alla cultura alimentare e al gusto. Viene poi indagato lo splendido "De re coquinaria" di Apicio appartenuto al senatore Mino de’ Rossi e conservato oggi presso la Bodleian Library di Oxford. Nella seconda parte si affronta invece lo studio della decorazione miniata del codice, in relazione ad altri esempi coevi e si contestualizza l'opera all'interno dello straordinario percorso artistico di Giovanni Battista Cavalletto.

In an article in The Burlington Magazine of 1933, British theorist Herbert Read (1893–1968) proposed “a basic linear signature of our race.” His invocation of line as a mark of identity is representative of a wider community of thinkers who linked the British avant-garde with medieval illumination via the watercolors of the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries. Theorists and scholars such as Kenneth Clark (1903–1983), William George Constable (1887–1976), and Nikolaus Pevsner (1902–1983) joined Read in identifying drawing as an essential aspect of medieval illumination that had re-emerged in the compositions of the Romantic period as well as those of the Neo-Romantics, including John Piper (1903–1992) and Paul Nash (1889–1946). Theoretical enthusiasm for this lineage arose not only from aesthetic affinities but also from political utility. Amid concerns over mounting political extremism, notions of medieval art were useful as emblems of British precedent for sustainable and proud work. This paper traces the use of line at the time, most notably by Read, as a symbolic mark that promoted a balance between individualism and collectivism through its connection to the medieval period. Furthermore, I argue that harnessing the moral connotations of line was possible, and particularly effective, because of culturally available understandings of the drawn line's distinctive intimacy.

First notes concerning the fifteenth century choir books of San Michele in Bosco in Bologna. This contribution deals with a group fifteenth century Antiphonaries now preserved in the Civic Medieval Museum of Bologna, but originally belonging to the Olivetan monastery of San Michele in Bosco in Bologna (mss. 552, 554-559, 562). The illuminated initials decorating mss. 554-559 are traditionally attributed to the Lombard illuminator Venturino Mercati, while in ms. 562 there are three famous initials illuminated by Sano di Pietro, and ms. 552 is commonly referred to an unknown Lombard illuminator. On stylistic grounds, these manuscripts have been dated to the years following Venturino's involvement in the decoration of the choir library of Monteoliveto Maggiore, mother-house of the Olivetan congregation, that is to say after 1472-1473. Starting from an analytical cataloging of the manuscripts as a whole, a general reconsideration of the corpus of illuminated initials, and a new inte...

Illuminated Dante Project, in collaboration with the Advanced Course in History and Philology of the Manuscript and Ancient Book, has invited Lieve Watteeuw, KU Leuven, and Hendrik Hameeuw, KU Leuven, to hold a workshop/seminar limited to the students of the Advanced Course on 20-21 May 2019 at the Girolamini Library of Naples. On that occasion, Watteeuw and Hameeuw will test for the very first time in Italy the technology of Microdome on some manuscripts of the Library, and in particular on the ancient Dante manuscript known as "Codice Filippino". A restricted group of experts and researchers in the domains of philology, codicology, history of art, book restoration and conservation, will take part in this intervention. The outcomes of this research, along with the perspectives of KU Leuven Book Heritage Lab’s partnership with both Illuminated Dante Project and the Advanced Course, will be publicly communicated on May 21, 2019 at 15.00 at Sala Ex Cataloghi, Department of H...

Among the most distinctive visual aspects of the Alamire manuscripts are the initials that incorporate grotesque male heads. Although they have been linked to the Alamire scriptorium, the relationship between the producers of these grotesque initials, the scribes, and the miniaturists has thus far not been determined. This article offers an art-historical analysis of the grotesque initials, the decorated initials, the border decorations, and the miniatures in the entire Alamire corpus. An investigation of stylistic evidence, including the division of work between the painters of the grotesque initials, the miniatures, and the painted borders, leads to the conclusion that the grotesque initials were produced by professional illuminators. Two main stylistic groups can be discerned. One of these was probably produced by artists under the direction of Jacques Scoon, who signed one of the grotesque initials in MechAS s.s., and who may well have organized the illumination of the choirbooks. Several illuminators from the circle of the Master of the Prayer Books of around 1500 participated in the execution of the minor illustrations, strewn borders, and decorated initials that appear in conjunction with the grotesque initials. The miniatures and borders on the major opening pages were usually ordered from the Master of the Baudeloo Missal, who worked independently from the workshop that provided the grotesque initials.