Illuminated Manuscripts & Other Enlightenments

Fogarty, Robert S., The Antioch Review

Many museums in these straitened days are turning to their storage areas to mount shows at minimal cost. No blockbusters, expensive middlemen, just the archives (their equivalent of our backlist) to cart up from downstairs, which eliminates special transportation costs and insurance fees. The Cleveland Museum of Art has done just that recently and put together an impressive small show titled "The Glory of the Painted Page" that drew upon their impressive collection of illuminated manuscripts: "missals" for the mass, "graduals" that contained liturgical music, and "psalters" for the psalms. The illustrated work might be a single letter or a single leaf from a larger text. In one 1420 gradual, for example, there was a vine creeping up the side of a page that wrapped around a putto (an angel), a rabbit, and a stork. In 1185 Geraldus Cambrensis wrote appropriately about the complexity …

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Publication information: Article title: Illuminated Manuscripts & Other Enlightenments. Contributors: Fogarty, Robert S. - Author. Magazine title: The Antioch Review. Volume: 69. Issue: 2 Publication date: Spring 2011. Page number: 205+. © 1999 Antioch Review, Inc. COPYRIGHT 2011 Gale Group.

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