The two books presented by Walter of Milemete to Edward III in 1326-7 are treated together. Two campaigns of decoration are suggested for the Milemete Treatise: an original campaign c1326-7 and one largely executed by a single artist before Queen Isabella's fall from power c1330. Three campaigns of decoration are suggested for the companion volume the Holkham Secretum. An original campaign, perhaps earlier than that on the Milemete Treatise, but still c1326-7, a second campaign c1327-30 and later work added when the book was repaired c1340-50. The iconography of the Milemete Treatise is related to court models and the 'Flores Historiarum'. The iconography of the Holkham Secretum is seen as having been created in three campaigns related to the different artists who worked on the book. From an analysis of the documentary evidence concerning illuminators in England in the Middle Ages, a model is applied which suggests the existence of three major centres of illumination in England, Oxford, Cambridge and London, as well as minor regional towns which also supported illuminators. The localisation of liturgical manuscripts, the patronage evidence from both secular and liturgical manuscripts as well as iconographical and codicological comparisons, are all used to suggest that the first group of illuminators of the Holkham Secretum were based at oxford. The main group of the Milemete Treatise itself can be associated with these artists, but also with more metropolitan trends and London. The later work on the Holkham Secretum is associated with an 'Ely group' of manuscripts c1340-50, produced by artists who may have been based at Cambridge. 3 it is suggested that some artists may have been trained in one 'centre' or 'workshop', but could be itinerant. other artists appear to be more closely related to Court painting in London through their style and the iconography of their miniatures. At least two of the artists who worked on the Milemete Treatise and Holkham Secretum1 after the initial campaign, but before c1330, fall into the latter category.

Combining three major facets of Alfonso's final and most personal work, this holistic study utilizes a philological approach involving codicology, hermeneutics, history of art, iconology, paleography, and philosophy. Like his Cantigas de Santa María, with its vast musical, poetic and artistic dimensions, the Book of Games is a largely unexplored multi-media treasure trove of knowledge about thirteenth-century games, art and symbolism as well as personal information about the Wise King himself. Chapter I explains the historical chess, dice, backgammon and mill games ands offers the first complete English translation of the Book. Descriptions and diagrams of all 144 games, including PowerPoint presentations of all 103 chess problems using a font specially designed to match the original manuscript exactly, are presented in an international format which brings these challenging and entertaining games to life. Chapter II surveys all 151 illuminations, exploring their cultural value and identifying portraits of Alfonso, his wife, his lover, his children, his friends and his sources. Alongside traditional medieval iconography, these may represent some of the earliest known likenesses in medieval portraiture and some of the first private, non-iconographic images of a Spanish king. Chapter III interprets the literal, allegorical, tropological and anagogical meanings of each game according to the Hermetic principle "As above, so below" as well as the numerological symbolism and didactic structure reflected in the book's Scholastic structure. Each game in the Libro de los juegos contains a clue "pora los entendudos e mayormientre pora aquellos que saben la Arte de Astronomia" (fol. 95r) for understanding the connection between astrology and human affairs. At the end of his ill-starred life Alfonso saw reflected in the microcosm of these games, the determinism inherent in the workings of the universe. By studying the patterns in these games, Alfonso hoped to discover how best to play the game of life using both his "seso," or skill, and his lucky number seven. The numerological and astrological significance of the numbers seven and twelve, present in the entire work's structure and especially the concluding games, relate the Book of Games to the Alfonsine legal, scientific and religious corpus.

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This dissertation considers an unfamiliar but fundamental aspect of late-medieval art: the role of documentation. Documents played as critical a part in that society as they do in our own. In late-medieval consciousness, the charter loomed as large as the sacred image, and documentation mattered no less than devotion—while the two also had a profound and inextricable connection. Discussion begins with three principal arguments, explained in detail in the first chapter: 1. The materials of documentation are part of the history of art; and accordingly, art-historical methods render an important contribution to diplomatics. 2. Documents are an important subject of representation; and accordingly, works of art are important sources for the cultural reception of documentary practices. 3. Documents are an important model for representation; and, consequently, an understanding of the paradigmatic role of the document suggests an alternative dimension to the interpretation of late-medieval art. The chapters that follow pursue these arguments through the analysis of individual works of art—charters, seals, archival manuscripts, liturgical manuscripts, architecture, and sculpture. These chapters also include a study of one of the great monuments of English gothic art: the Sherborne Missal, produced c.1400 for the Benedictine abbey of Sherborne. Ideas of documentation constitute critical aspects both of the Missal’s subject matter and its modes of representation, and these “documentary” elements also relate closely to the larger ideological project of the Missal’s creators. As details of the manuscript’s patronage, illumination, liturgy, inscriptions, and codicology all demonstrate, its creators associated documentation with central religious ideas about devotional images and the eucharist—essentially, the nature of valid representation and effective action. In keeping with the regional and institutional context of this principal study, the other objects discussed come primarily from English religious institutions. That context, however, by no means implies that the importance of documentation is limited either to England or to the conventual sphere, although it manifests itself differently from place to place and from one estate to another. The studies in this thesis represent only one example of where its arguments might lead, and what its approach might reveal in other works of art. / History of Art and Architecture

This thesis presents the first full study of the anonymous illuminator known by the name of convention, the Master of Spencer 6, after his finest work, ms. 6 in the Spencer Collection at the New York Public Library. Active at the turn of the sixteenth century, during the transitional period between the Middle Ages and the Renaissance, this artist provides a revealing case study for examining the changing tastes and preoccupations of the patrons, as well as the way in which illuminators were operating in order to secure work and forge a career. The career of the Master of Spencer 6 can be reconstructed from nearly forty surviving books and fragments. He appears to have painted manuscripts for a wide range of clientele, from unknown merchants to figures such as Henry VII of England. The quality of his execution is equally varied, from modest, hastily prepared images, to exquisite paintings invested with verisimilitude and invention that deserve wider acknowledgement. This illuminator, presumably based in Bourges, seems to have travelled as far as Troyes, Paris, Tours, and possibly Lyon, in search of patronage. Although he specialised in devotional images, he also illustrated texts of historical and moral interest. The Master of Spencer 6 was particularly talented in drawing. He appears to have been required to work quickly, in order to respond to the high demand for books; yet, despite the haste, he was able to produce images that were pleasing. A large part of the appeal in his images seems to rely on the quality of line. While his colours were clean and bright, he often applied them hastily or carelessly over the contour lines. Nearly always these shortcomings appear unnoticeable due to the beauty of the lines that define the design. The variety of decorative schemes, layouts, spatial devices, compositions and iconographic motifs utilised by the Master of Spencer 6 demonstrate one of the keys to his success. He was able to diversify his canon to realise any potential order from the vast geographical and social range of his clientele. He also managed to develop his style according to current tastes and fashions. He adapted ideas and techniques from his collaborators, the Colombe workshop and Jacquelin de Montluçon. This thesis provides also the first study of Jacquelin de Montluçon, the painter identified here as the main collaborator of the Master of Spencer 6. Methods of technical art history are used to analyse his sophisticated manner of mixing pigments to produce convincing effects of light. The way in which he applied paint onto a surface, on parchment, panel and stained glass, is used to support attributions and explore the versatile artist that emerges from the analysis. This investigation into these two hitherto little-known artists demonstrates, on one hand, what was required for artists to succeed over others in the profession of manuscript illumination in late fifteenth-century France, and on the other hand, what the concerns of the individuals commissioning images were.

This dissertation critiques and updates the theoretical frameworks for understanding encyclopedic and diagrammatic images as presented in the scholarship of Lucy Freeman Sandler, Barbara Maria Stafford, John Bender, and Michael Marrinan. It offers a new model for examining the cognitive role of images by studying an important medieval encyclopedia, On the Properties of Things, originally written in Latin by Bartholomaeus Anglicus in the thirteenth century. Bartholomaeus’ text was the most popular encyclopedia of the later middle ages and four vernacular translations were produced and circulated between the fourteenth and sixteenth centuries. Significantly, the French translation of the compendium, coming out of the vernacularization movement of King Charles V but radiating out to other production centres, involved the design of an elaborate and novel illustrative program. The present project examines two exceptional fifteenth-century French copies of this encyclopedia (BnF fr. 9141 and BnF fr. 135/6), and interprets them in light of the shifting intellectual culture and evolving reading practices of late-medieval lay audiences. The information-rich and highly aestheticized miniatures found in such encyclopedic manuscripts have traditionally been defined, by Sandler and others, as having an explanatory function and the capacity to elevate the content of the text through displays of material luxury. My model expands the significance of such images by highlighting their capacity to promote thought. I argue that images in didactic compendia can (i) encourage the reader to actively engage with the text through representations of aristocratic readers performing their understanding of the book socially, and (ii) facilitate visual thinking by aesthetically reflecting the structure of the encyclopedic text through the diagrammatic strategies of the collection, compression, and division of fragmented information. Though the images in my two manuscript case studies take distinct approaches to reader engagement and the mediation of knowledge, in both cases the power of these visualizations rests in the cognitive acts and range of mental associations they provoke. This dissertation demonstrates that epistemically-dense images, in addition to merely reflecting a text, could shape knowledge as it was being formed in the minds of active viewers, readers, writers, and artists, in an intellectually rich period in late-medieval France. / Graduate

The Franciscan Bible from the National Museum Library in Prague (XII.B.13) Within the Context of 13th Century Painting The painted miniatures decorating the so-called Franciscan Bible (Prague, KNM XII.B.13), which dates in around the 1270s, illustrate the development of painting in Central Europe during the transition period between Late Romanesque and Gothic style. Illuminations in the Franciscan Bible are the work of four masters, the first of whom illustrated the Old Testament, and the latter three worked on the New Testament. The style of the illuminations places its authors firmly in the circle of artists drawing inspiration from the workshop of Giovanni da Gaibana. The Gaibanesque style is characterized by using traditional local motifs, with elongated tails expanding into the borders. Color tones gradually shift toward the cooler palette; form tends toward more schematic drawings and simplified shapes; imitation of Western style is characterized by gradual abandonment of heavy impasto modeling. The First Master most likely came from the Central Rhenish region, but his ornamental motifs are inspired by the Gaibanesque tradition; the other three masters, on the other hand, fully adopted the Gaibanesque style. Their works differ in the way they chose to interpret the common motifs, their use of...

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The thesis is a comparative and multidisciplinary study of legendary genealogies in the historical writing of northern England and Iceland c. 1120 – c. 1241. Historical writing was produced in abundance over this period in both areas and the frequent contact between England and Scandinavia, as well as shared use of early medieval insular sources make them especially suitable for comparison. The Viking invasions and settlement in England had a significant impact on English culture, language and literature and changed attitudes to their own legendary past. The Danish conquest of England in the early eleventh-century also brought the insular and Scandinavian worlds closer together, and even after the Norman Conquest in 1066, England and Scandinavia engaged in scholarly and textual exchange The theoretical framework for the thesis combines approaches from religious history, art history, political history, literature history and gender history. The main research questions of the thesis consider the dissemination, development, and purpose of legendary genealogies. The sources are a collection of Durham related manuscripts with illuminations of the pagan god Woden (c. 1120–88) in two historical works De Primo Saxonum Aduentu and De Gestis Regum; Genealogia Regum Anglorum (Rievaulx, 1153x54) by Aelred of Rievaulx; two works attributed to Snorri Sturluson’s Prose Edda (Iceland, 1220s) and Heimskringla (Iceland, 1225x35). Common to the sources is the inclusion of genealogies that stretch from legendary generations to living individuals at the time of writing. Thus, genealogies connected dynasties and civilisations in mutual descent from pagan, Trojan and biblical ancestors. By analysing textual dissemination as well as political contexts, literary patronage and mechanisms in legitimisation of power, the thesis address amalgamations of origin myths, the use and significance euhemerised pagan gods, and female generations in genealogies.