Manuscript illumination

Manuscript illumination is the decoration of handwritten books with painted images, ornamental designs, and colored or metallic details. It includes both narrative pictures and embellishments that structure or adorn the text.

Gold leaf: Gold beaten into thin sheets for application to surfaces. Illuminators used it to create reflective details and brilliant backgrounds.
Initial: A large or decorated letter placed at the beginning of a text or section. Illuminated initials mark divisions and often frame miniature scenes.
Insular art: Art produced in Ireland and Britain from the late Roman period through the early Middle Ages. Its interlace and dense ornament shaped some of the most distinctive early illuminated books.
Book of Hours: A Christian devotional book containing prayers and offices for particular times of day. Its frequent ownership by laypeople made it a major setting for personal images and decoration.
Scribe: A person who copies texts by hand. Scribes prepared the written page that illuminators decorated, often in coordinated workshops.
Vellum: Fine writing material made from prepared animal skin, especially calfskin. Its smooth, durable surface supported paint, ink, and metallic decoration.
Historiated initial: An enlarged letter containing a figurative scene related to the text. It combines the function of a textual marker with narrative imagery.
Book of Kells: An elaborately decorated Gospel book made around 800, probably in a Columban monastery. Its intricate pages exemplify the visual ambition of Insular illumination.
Bestiary: A medieval book describing animals, often with Christian moral interpretations. Its animal pictures joined visual delight to instruction and moral commentary.
Monastic scriptorium: A place in a monastery where manuscripts were copied, produced, or stored. Scriptoria organized much of the labor and knowledge behind medieval illuminated books.

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