Monday, June 15, 2020
Intoxicating
Régine Pernoud, Those Terrible Middle Ages: Debunking the Myths, tr. Anne Englund Nash (San Francisco: Ignatius Press, 2000), p. 44:
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One ornamented letter is enough to reveal what artistic creation could be in the Romanesque period. Let us not even speak of those that recount, for instance, an entire biblical or historical scene. A quite simple initial, in its essential, readable, recognizable form, is found taken up anew by every copyist, every illuminator, who made it his own and developed its inner possibilities, so to speak. It can be almost intoxicating; one becomes a veritable maze of foliage and interlacing, another gives birth to an animal that ends in a man's face, or a man becomes a monster or angel or demon; nevertheless, the letter has not been betrayed; it remains, but ceaselessly recreated.St. Louis Psalter, (Leiden, University Library, BPL 76A), folio 30v:
