Jane Coleman, age 16, of Jamestown, N.Y., for her question:
WHEN WERE ILLUMINATED MANUSCRIPTS FIRST MADE?
Illuminated manuscripts are calligraphic or hand drawn scrolls and books that have been enhanced by artists with decorations and paintings. Manuscript illumination is actually the brightening of the handwritten text with gold decorations as well as the use of embellishment and illustration to enhance the pages of a medical manuscript.
Manuscript illumination started in ancient Egypt with the illustrated "Book of the Dead." The Egyptians called these papyrus scrolls "coming forth by day," and they were made in the second milennium, B.C.
The early Egyptian texts consisted of descriptions of ceremonies preceding burial, prayers recited by priests or relatives of the dead and instructions for the conduct of the deceased in the world beyond the grave.
The dry Egyptian climate preserved these buried papyrus illuminated manuscripts. The finest can be found today in the British Museum.
During the Middle Ages, when manuscript painting was considered a high art, illuminators decorated their codices in several ways. The book frequently started with a carpet page, so called because its abstract designs resembled an Oriental carpet.
Within the text, initial letters were enlarged and adorned, sometimes containing figures and scenes and at times shaped into zoomorphic (animal like) forms. In other manuscripts, columns of writing were surrounded by botanical ornamentation, or the margins were filled with drawings of birds, animals and imaginary beings.
Some biblical, historical and literary manuscripts contained full page illustrations, either with the text or grouped together at the beginning.
Only a few illuminated manuscripts from the Early Christian and Byzantine periods (first through the sixth century) have been preserved.
The centers for manuscript illumination from the seventh through the ninth centuries were monasteries in Ireland and England. Gospel books and missals were based on model codices from Italy and Coptic Egypt.
The ornate, two dimensional carpet pages of those Anglo Celtic manuscripts resemble Islamic Korans and Hebrew Bibles from late ninth¬and 10th century Tiberias.
In the late eighth and ninth centuries, Carolingian style dominated continental Europe. Biblical, historical and literary works were illuminated in monasteries for royal and ecclesiastical patrons.
In the 10th and 11 centuries in England, styles were associated with such monasteries as Canterbury and Winchester. Subject matter included grotesques, that is, dragons or other mythical figures, some part human and part beast. These figures were called "drolleries" in the Gothic period, when they were used to brighten margins.
The growth of cities in Europe in the Gothic Age (13th to 15th centuries) enabled illuminators to form guilds, especially in Paris where the finest manuscripts were made.