What illuminating was. (What illuminating should be). With illustr. by W.R. Tymms. Condensed from 'The art of illuminating'.

by Matthew Digby Wyatt

This historic book may have numerous typos and missing text. Purchasers can download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. Not indexed. Not illustrated. 1861 ...the princely house of the Barberini and its magnificent head, Urban VIII. (1023--1644). He was a pupil of Pietro da Cortona, and an artist of great skill and refinement.1 For still more recent popes artists of great excellence continued to be employed, including for Alexander VII. the celebrated Magdalena Corvina, who worked from 1655 to 1657 j and for Innocent XI (1676 to 1689) a German, who signs his productions "Joann, frid-Heriback." Aa the popes retained their illuminators for the decoration of precious documents, so did the doges of Venice; and probably the most magnificent of all illumination, executed after the general spread of printed books had checked, although not extinguished, the art, may be found in the precious "Dncalea," wrought indeed by several of the greatest Venetian painters.2 I need scarcely remind the reader, that the earliest woodcut and printed books were made to imitate manuscripts so closely as to deceive the inexperienced eye. "Artes moriendi," "Specula," "Bibliae Pauperum," and "Donatuses,"--the principal types of block books,3--represent illuminated manuscripts in popular demand at the date of the introduction into Europe of Xylographic Art. Spaces were frequently left, both in the block books and in the earliest books printed with movable type, for the illumination, by hand, of initial letters, so as to carry the illusion as far as possible. This practice was abandoned as soon as the learned discovered the means by which such wonderfully cheap apparent transcripts of voluminous works could be brought into the and the old decorated initial and ornamental letters were reproduced from type and wood blocks. 1 The Kensington Museum possesses a beautiful specimen b...

54 pages, Paperback

Published January 1, 2012

About the author

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Matthew...

from wikipedia:

Sir Matthew Digby Wyatt (28 July 1820 – 21 May 1877) was a British architect and art historian who became Secretary of the Great Exhibition, Surveyor of the East India Company and the first Slade Professor of Fine Art at the University of Cambridge.[1] From 1855 until 1859 he was honorary secretary of the Royal Institute of British Architects, and in 1866 received the Royal Gold Medal.[2]