The Golden Script

The Golden Script

The art of initials is one of the most significant achievements of medieval book art. Although the practice of emphasizing the initial letters of text passages began in late antiquity, it was medieval illuminators who first conquered the capital letters (majuscules) as a field for artistic creativity and invention. In the course of the Middle Ages, initials, together with decorated borders and frames, became those places in precious manuscripts where their creators could try out and develop their artistic talents. The occasionally humorous results give witness to a great joy in design and creation. The small works of art, which are often adorned with gold and silver, became a central decorative element of secular and religious books already in the Early Middle Ages and fulfilled various functions. They were decoration, underlined the value of a text, but also represented the status and wealth of the patron, were pictorial additions to the text content, and were used to structure the text.

Magnificent Letters from the Early Middle Ages to the Renaissance

Just like the script of the body of the text and the miniatures, their forms of course arose from the respective taste of the time and stylistic developments and thus changed over time. This single-leaf collection of ten beautiful pages from the 8th to 15th centuries provides a small but artful insight into the limitless variety created by medieval illuminators – from an impressive interlace initial from the Lindisfarne Gospels to a beautiful initial with split stem and scroll ornament from the Harley Psalter and an historiated initial from the Bohun Psalter, designed with incredible attention to detail, to a sumptuous Renaissance decorated page from the Sforza Hours.

1. Incipit Decorated Page of the Gospel of John
   BLindisfarne Gospels, Lindisfarne, before 698
   London, British Library

2. Incipit Decorated Page of the Gospel of Matthew
   Ebbo Gospels, Reims, 816/835
   Epernay, Bibliothèque municipale

3. Canon Table
   Gospels of Lothair, Tours, ca. 849/851
   Paris, Bibliothèque nationale de France

4. Beatus Vir Initial Decorated Page for Psalm 1
   Harley Psalter, Winchester, ca. 980
   London, British Library

5. “Q” Initial with Scenes from the Life of Jacob
   Bohun Psalter, England, ca. 1370
   Oxford, Exeter College

6. “D” Initial with Royal Chess Game
   Tafel van den Kersten Ghelove, Utrecht, ca. 1410
   New York, The Morgan Library & Museum

7. Initial Decorated Page
   Darmstadt Pessach Haggadah - Codex Orientalis 8, Heidelberg, ca. 1430
   Darmstadt, Hessische Landes- und Hochschulbibliothek

8. “D” Initial with the Adoration of the Magi
   Stephan Lochner Prayer Book of 1451, Cologne, 1451
   Darmstadt, Hessische Landes- und Hochschulbibliothek

9. “D” Initial with the Presentation of Jesus at the Temple
   Hours of Mary of Burgundy, Ghent or Bruges, 1470–1480
   Vienna, Österreichische Nationalbibliothek

10. “D” Initial
    Sforza Hours, Milan and Ghent, ca. 1486/90 and around 1520
    London, British Library