Rubricated / ticked: Added red (or another color) stroke on or through a capital or initial letter. Pen-flourished: Also called Puzzle or Filigree initials. Littera Florissa: With pen-flourished geometric & leaf motifs. Jigsaw: Letterpress initials for polychromatic printing, comprising interlocking parts that can be inked separately, or à la poupée. Inhabited: Containing human or animal figures but not an identifiable narrative scene. Illuminated: Strictly speaking guided with gold & silver but often used to describe any lavishly colored & decorated initial. Historiated: Depicting a story or narrative, often related to the text. Gymnastic: Comprising acrobatic human or animal forms. KINDS OF INITIAL / NOMENCLATUREĪnthropomorphic: Resembling or in the shape of human forms.īuilt-up: Letters made heavier by the addition of extra or thicker strokes. The illuminated or decorated initial was born, and would remain a regular feature of books for more than a thousand years.
#DONKEYS IN MEDIEVAL ILLUMINATED MANUSCRIPTS FULL#
Sometimes too, our letters went full circle when scribes turned those letters again into pictures of things: thus letters took on the forms of dragons, saints and sinners, flora and fauna.
In time those initial letters were further differentiated by the addition of decoration and even pictures. An obvious way to emphasize the beginning of a book or section was to simply increase the size of the first or initial letter. Joannes Koulix, 1101 - The Met Initially…Ĭenturies before the advent of lowercase letters, manuscripts were written in majuscule or capital letters. Inhabited Greek π (pi) initial, topped by a portrait of St, Paul. Venice, 1482 - Photo thanks to Paul Dijstelberge.
This one by Erhard Ratdolt, an early proponent of their use. A fairly typical early printed woodcut initial. Angels singing in this illuminated historiated initial G, by Lorenzo Monaco, early 15th century - Rijks Museum 3. A ‘puzzle’ initial Q by Fra Angelico, from a Gradual (church music book) produced before 1454 - Polo Museale Fiorentino 2. Cuthbert Gospel - British Libraryīottom row (L → R): 1. A change in size and script, from Uncial to Roman) is enough to indicate the start of a new verse (7:31) in the Gospel of John. Trompe l’oeil initial from a manuscript book of hours produced in France at the close of the 15th century - Université de Liège 4. ‘You’ll want that seen to!’ Historiated initial from the popular medieval medical textbook, Avicenna’s Canon medicinae, Paris 13th century - Bibliothèque municipale 3. Zoomorphic dragon initial from the The Arnstein Bible - c. The story of writing is in large part written by those experiments, in adopting and adapting, in paring down and embellishing. If they hadn’t, then Europe would still be writing in all-caps. Indeed, it’s through such experimentation that Roman square capitals (and Greek inscriptional capitals) evolved into cursive forms that eventually became minuscule or lowercase letters. But our experiments with letterforms never ceased. Some, like the letter O, for example, retain those traces still - it’s easy to imagine an O as an eye, especially when we add a smaller circle or dot at its center, as it sometimes appeared in Egypt and the Middle East, more than 3,000 years ago. Many of the letterforms we use today evolved from pictures of things.
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