The Pigments of British Illuminators: A Scientific and Cultural Investigation

点击翻译按钮获取中文摘要

British illuminated manuscripts from the medieval period are priceless artefacts and are remarkable artistic, literary, and historical sources for scholarship. One of the qualities that makes these manuscripts so captivating - their coloration - is also a precious source of knowledge. Manuscripts were central to learning, culture, belief, and art in Britain from the seventh century to the fifteenth. The ways in which they were made - first in monasteries, then by paid professionals in urban centres - reflect both the roles that they fulfilled, and the materials and technologies that were available at that time and place. As inks and pigments were fundamental to writing and illuminating, they helped to determine the forms of book culture and played a formative role in the evolution of pictorial art. Differing in type (organic, mineral, alchemical) and availability (some made from local materials, others relying on long-distance trade), pigments varied considerably in cost, with practical and symbolic implications for how they were used and perceived. Nevertheless, reliable information about them is currently very limited: the origin, nature, and deployment of the pigments used by scribes and illuminators during the nine centuries in question are unwritten chapters of British cultural, bibliographical, scientific, and artistic history.There is very little work of enduring value on these pigments, owing to a series of practical difficulties. Manuscripts are dispersed around museums and university and cathedral libraries across the country. There is (rightly) a moratorium on taking samples from medieval and renaissance manuscripts: they are fragile, and too valuable. Any investigation must be undertaken by non-invasive, non-destructive means. The technology to accomplish this task has existed since the 1980s, but work to date has been piecemeal and extremely limited because of the expense and size of the equipment, and because of conservation restrictions and high insurance costs that debar the moving of precious manuscripts to laboratories. However, new conservation approved techniques, and modern, mobile instrumentation mark a step-change in equipment mobility, and in accuracy of results. The current equipment, much of which has been developed as bespoke, dedicated tools by the team, has set new benchmarks in security, sensitivity, and spatial resolution. The proven high performance, mobile resources at the disposal of the present team, its joint manuscript-chemistry-physics expertise, and its collective experience in examining manuscripts in pilot studies funded by Durham and Cambridge Universities, mean that this hitherto impracticable project has now become feasible. This project combines unique historical, curatorial, and scientific skillsets to identify the pigments of medieval manuscripts without damaging them.The team will identify the pigments in a broad, carefully chosen selection of ca. 200 manuscripts. These range in date from the seventh to the fifteenth centuries; they represent a cross-section of the major centres of production; and they include books that have a known origin and provenance and that can, therefore, act as a fiducial point for a time and place. From this information, the team (and other scholars) will be able to analyse: patterns of cultural, social, and economic interaction between regions and scribal centres; the use of local materials and the movement of trade; reasons for changes in pigments; innovations by illuminators to overcome technological limitations; the interplay of cost, technology, and artistic practice.The principal outcome will be the first scientific account of the pigments of British illuminated manuscripts as a whole, which will be the fundamental work of reference for future research in the field; with additional benefits in training and providing reliable information to museums, archives, conservators, and their audiences.