57v), or with the bear looking suspiciously like a medieval Winnie the Pooh ( Harley MS 3448, f. 57v), with a duck in an English bestiary ( Harley MS 3244, f. How about the beehives in an Italian herbal ( Sloane MS 4016, f. When it comes to bees, we are also spoilt for choice. British Library experts have been tracking down the mighty molluscs. 39v), and would have surely won the prize were it not for the magnificent illustration of the constellation 'Cygnus', made in 9th-century France ( Harley MS 647, f. Knights are often pictured fighting snails in medieval manuscripts - but their significance has been lost in the slime of time. Scholar Lilian Randall provides the best theory for the unusual motif: these medieval knights fought snails in the margins because snails represented the. 110r).įinally for our birds, how about a little swan-upmanship? This first swan with its noble beak is found in a 13th-century English bestiary ( Royal MS 12 C XIX, f. We couldn't resist showing you another peacock, this time alongside other birds, among them a hoopoe and a jay, in a cutting from a gospel lectionary of Pope Gregory XIII ( Add MS 21412, f. If you look carefully at the same border, you can also see a rather splendid peacock and a bear playing the bagpipes! 29r), at the beginning of the Annunciation. Talking of owls, this rather important looking specimen is found in the border of the Hours of the Earls of Ormond ( Harley MS 2887, f. 6r), and this rather fetching pair of owls (f. 4r), the pelican striking her breast to feed her young with the blood (f. We are particularly fond of the heron (f. 14r).Īnother manuscript we often look to for inspiration is Burney MS 97, made in Paris in the 1550s or 1560s. British Library experts have been tracking down the mighty. In a much later manuscript, known as the Hours of Dionora of Urbino ( Yates Thompson MS 7), is found this border at the beginning of the Hours of the Virgin, containing this rather realistic blue tit and bullfinch separated by a roundel of John the Baptist (f. Knights are often pictured fighting snails in medieval manuscripts - but their significance has been lost in the slime of time. An equally famous image in the same book is that of St Kevin, who kept so still that a blackbird nested in the palm of his hand (f. 9r) and the kingfishers and stork featured below (f. A study on medieval and Renaissance manuscripts where snails are depicted on marginalia shows that these illustrations are a comic relief due to the similarity between the armor of knights and the shell of snails. The margins of this late 12th or early 13th-century of the Topography of Ireland by Gerald of Wales are adorned with a number of illustrations, including the dive-bombing osprey (shown above, Royal MS 13 B VIII, f. While animals in general were often seen as synonymous for certain morals or characteristics, the scene of a diminutive snail battling it out with a medieval knight, and often having the upper hand to boot, remains a mystery. In this blogpost, we thought we would delight you with a selection of the charming pictures of birds and bees found in manuscripts in the British Library's collections. Some of our favourite images are of elephants, while western European attempts to accurately depict crocodiles and camels always make us smile. While some of them, like Lilian Randall’s suggestion positing the snail as a counterpoint of chivalry, may have validity in some geographies and some particular epochs, it can only be applied with extreme caution and acute sensibility to the historical context of the manuscript in question.As many of our readers are aware, medieval manuscripts are an invaluable source for illustrations of cats and dogs and knights fighting snails. To my mind, removed as it is from the early scholarly discussion on the subject, all of these suggestions are wanting to some extent. Some of these explanations have been summarised by Michael Camille in his famous book on medieval marginalia, Image on the Edge, and also in the British Library blogpost. Biggs, there are various explanations proffered for what the snails meant to the medieval onlooker, what role or roles they play in the theatre of the page and how they should be understood. Recently, they issued a lovely post on marginal snails in medieval manuscripts, which can be read here. In a somewhat similar way there always comes something new from the wonderful British Library’s medieval blogpost. Out of Africa something new always comes, remarked Lucretius in his famous poem on the nature of things. Introduction: x Africa semper aliquid novi ~ De Rerum Natura, Lucretius (8.42)
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. ArchivesCategories |