You thought that it was impossible to buy a piece dating from the Middle Ages or the Renaissance? You thought you could only see such art in museums? Don`'t be fooled! Here, you`'ll find precious miniatures and manuscripts, on parchment, illuminated, or gold-leafed...

The beauty and longevity of illuminated manuscripts is due to the materials, techniques and well-defined steps that are used to produce them. The stages of production of a manuscript and the different processes.

• The making of the parchment
• The creation of the mock-up by the director of the scriptorium, or armarius
• Calligraphy performed by the scribe or copyist in black ink
• Lettering and rubrication: writing of texts in red to emphasize titles by the rubricator
• Illumination: the miniaturist, or pictor, draws, colors and applies gold leaf

1. The Parchment

It was first of all necessary to produce the parchment, from the Greek word permagane or skin of Pergame. It is a medium made of animal skin, taking a long time to prepare, that is quasi-indestructible and maintains the purity of the colors applied to it. Finer skins, or vellum, come from stillborn animals, originally calves (from the Latin velum).

2. The Mock-Up

The director of the scriptorium divided up the tasks, managed and supervised the work of such a fine quality. It was either him, or an experienced scribe, that would make the preliminary marks on the page to indicate the appropriate spacing for the text, the rubrics, capitals and illuminations.

3. The calligraphy

Next, the scribe or the copyist wrote out the text in calligraphy, leaving spaces for the capitals, the miniatures and the borders. At the time the manuscripts were made (14th -15th centuries), scribes used a feather plume* that took a long time to prepare and black ink usually made from oak gall.* If he had made any mistakes he could erase them with bread. It's important to know that even with the heating, the ink could freeze in the wells.

4. The letterings* and rubrics*

In the beginning, the red ink, applied minimally, was used by the rubricator for the rubrics, or titles, and the capital letters. The Latin, rubricare, means “to color red.” The letterings are capitals placed a the beginning of a sentence or important paragraph of a text. They are what truly make occidental manuscripts original. Later, they became more ornate or historiated* and evolved into the art of illumination. Among them, especially in the margin, are often found the initials of the patron.

5. The Illumination*

Once the text is completed, it was protected by an old parchment and the illuminator or pictor, using a lead pencil or silver point, sketched the margin decorations, miniatures, and ornate or historiated capitals. After the decline of the Byzantine schools, then of the English ones, the French schools rapidly became very famous for the magnificence of their designs. The colors used were red, green, and blue. Yellow didn't exist; it was depicted with gold.

The Gold Placing the gold leaf on the parchment is one of the most delicate operations in the whole art of illumination. The illuminator carefully takes a small square of gold, extremely fine and very fragile. Then, he would place the gold on a place that he prepared himself so that the gold leaf would adhere to the parchment. Thanks to the thickness of the applied coat, this would create a resplendent relief. Next he would polish the gold with an agate stone in order to make it shine more radiantly.

The Colors

During this time period (14th-15th centuries), because of the crusades and trading, the great voyages had already begun. The colors were prepared using natural products found in nature that could come from the monastery garden or a faraway country. The pigments travelled in caravans, boats, and chariots. Thus it was possible to leave the confinement of the monasteries, of even the city itself, to venture to these new mysterious countries whose first postcards were being sketched, strange as it appeared, by people like Sébastien Munster. The diverse materials used, vegetal, animal, mineral, arrived to the monastery from many different horizons:
Lapis-lazuli from Afghanistan, Arabic gum from Africa, Vermilion from China or Spain, Dragon's blood from Indonesia…
They were prepared in different types of mortars according to the materials used and were finally turned into powders. They were placed on the parchment using a very thin paintbrush whose bristles came from long-haired animals such as a sable or marten. The most important aspect was the binding agent. The majority of illuminations from this period are produced with egg tempera.* This gives them the soft and satiny aspect of a real jewel. Furthermore, it is a technique that offers superior durability. The illuminator worked minutely in small strokes, waiting for each stroke to dry before applying another. This technique prevents cracking and confers on each color used a supreme purity.

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