Page 179 - Virtual Research Lab flip book

For the sake of this general discussion we may divide thirteenth and four- teenth century book production into two categories: the relatively expensive works produced for the luxury market, and the relatively inexpensive books produced for the scholarly market (recognizing that almost any hand-pro- duced book would have been significantly more expensive to produce, in terms of time and materials, than books later produced through the medium of printing). For the first half of the thirteenth century Bibles and psalters in Latin and other devotional works accounted for the bulk of high-quality luxury manuscript book production in France. As the century unfolded, a much wider demand for books for individual use encouraged the pro- duction of increasing numbers of picture books, including romances and histories, lives of popular saints and other historical characters, intended for the instruction and entertainment of the royal family, the nobility and the growing bourgeoisie. A new feature of these manuscripts was that they were written or translated into French, taking their place alongside religious manuscripts in Latin as important commissions and regular business of the Paris book trade. The new expanding clientele of literate laymen, only some of whom may have been tutored in Latin, also desired translations of the Old Testament, as it was seen as an important source of historical informa- tion. To meet the demands of the new market for vernacular history and romance, artists who had been trained to illustrate religious texts found new ways of adapting patterns of illustration to secular historical texts, which necessitated creating series of images that would effectively tell stories. A very early example of secular manuscript illumination before the semiotics of secular illumination were well-established is shown in a manuscript of classical works made around 1200 (Paris, BnF, Ms. lat. 7936). This includes illuminations borrowed from traditional biblical imagery. As the patterns of iconography evolved with this genre of manuscripts, religious iconography could be inserted in secular stories with the intent of transferring religious meaning to the historical events.
The variety of these solutions and the successful and compli- cated ways the images interacted with the text are a testament
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