AN ILLUMINATOR'S SKETCHBOOK

JANET BACKHOUSE

O N L Y a handful of the sketch- and model books compiled by artists during the MiddleAges have survived to the present day. In those which have come to light pictorial subject-matter predominates, and it is often far from clear whether the book contains models forminiatures or whether it was intended for the use of wall or glass painters. The morepurely decorative elements of a book painter's work are seldom found alone or even insubstantial quantity within a sketchbook and Sloane MS. 1448A in the British Libraryis therefore a welcome discovery.' It contains drawings for letters from six decorativealphabets, some of them combined with motifs for use in associated borders, executedon vellum partly witb a brush and partly with a pen in varying combinations of brown,blue-black, and mauve inks. Most of the letters are obviously intended as designs forfinished work fully illuminated in gold and colours, which distinguishes the collectionfrom the repertoire of a scribe or calligrapher.^ The manuscript has no indication oforiginal provenance, but the English character of most of the contents is unmistakableand the style suggests a date about the middle of the fifteenth century. During tbe ensu-ing hundred years or so the book passed through the hands of sundry English ownerswho left names, notes, and scribbles on many of the pages. Unfortunately nothingremains of any early cover. As it stands the sketchbook consists of twenty-seven leaves ofvellum, numbered fols. 3-29 as now arranged, each mounted separately on a paper guard(with the exception of fols. 26, 27 which are conjoint) and measuring approximately205 X 140 mm.

The principal series of designs, which begins at fol. 3, runs through the whole volumeand comprises drawings for twenty-three large-scale and exuberantly decorated initials.The whole alphabet with the exception of P, S, X, Y, and Z is represented, more thanone version having been attempted in the cases of A, D, and I.̂ Several letters remainunfinished. All but one or two are carried out in a combination of reddish brown andlavender inks, the former applied with a rather dry brush, the latter with a pen. Tbemore finished subjects vary from initials with ornament only for immediately adjacentuse (PI. I) to designs covering the whole of a page and incorporating suggestions forborder decoration, although the border elements are clearly out of proportion with theinitials because of the limitations imposed by the available space (PI. II). The motifsemployed throughout this series - luxuriant curling foliage decorated with groups of

I. Design for a decorated initial D. Sloane MS. 1448A, fol. 6.

IL Design for a decorated initial R, with suggestions for a border.Sloane MS. 1448A, fol. 15b.

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IIL Six letters from a smaller decorated alphabet. Sloane MS. 1448A, fol. 22b.

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little dots, strange fruits of the 'pineapple' variety, feathery fronds ending in curvedleaflets, and twisted scrolls within the framework of some of the letters - are all familiarin English illumination throughout the fifteenth century. Rather more idiosyncratic arethe birds occasionally woven into the decoration, one emerging from a cluster of foliageon fol. 4, two perched with half-spread wings in the left-hand border on fol. 5, and a pelicanin piety occupying the centre of the initial on fol. 7b. Also on fol. 5 the head of a smallcreature with pointed ears appears in the right of the initial. For these I can as yet suggestno parallel, but it could be that they will in time be found to link up with the decorationin a completed manuscript. The form of the major initials in this main series suggeststhat they were intended to embody ideas and to act as a rough guide to possibilities ratherthan to provide models for exact reproduction, though it is interesting to see tbat asingle small rose, at the centre of the letter L on fol. 11, has been closely outlined withprick holes for pouncing in the process of transferring it to another sheet of vellum orpaper.

A second alphabet, smaller in scale but using the same motifs as the main series, issketched at fols. 2ib-23. It, too, is carried out in a combination of brown and lavenderinks, applied respectively with brush and with pen. The letters are arranged in groupsof six to the page (five on the last). The D and the Q^are filled with carefully drawn 'tudor'roses, the M has a suggestion of a long-eared rabbit in its upper right-hand corner, andin the R what looks suspiciously like a pair of human legs is protruding from a trumpet-shaped flower (PI. III).

A third series of designs can be closely associated with these two in style and technique,though perhaps it should not strictly be classed as an alphabet, only the letters D and Sbeing involved. Eight pages of the manuscript are laid out as designs for the kind ofinitial and border combination that might be used on tbe principal text pages of a smallprivate Psalter or Hours. The single sketch incorporating an S, at fol. 9, shows the initialcombined in two different ways (the upper one unfinished) with a three-quarter borderor ^demi-vinet',-* a decorated bar on the left-hand side of the page and spiralled foliageand kidney-shaped leaves extending from it across the upper and lower margins. In allseven versions for the initial D (fols. 18-20, 21, and 23b) the letter occurs in the top left-hand corner of the design and a complete framing border or 'vinet' is shown, in each casecomposed of double lines filled with a repeating pattern and with auxiliary foliate decora-tion sprouting from the four corners and, in some cases, from other parts of the frame(PI. IV). These designs are carried out in two shades of brown ink and both brush andpen are used.

Two of the remaining three alphabets represented in the sketchbook, although lessclosely connected with those already described, seem also to date from the middle of thefifteenth century. At foL 3 are an isolated A and B, filled with foliage patterns and withlong marginal extensions, designed to be carried out in ink or in a single colour as embel-lishments to the otherwise undecorated chapter divisions of a simple manuscript. On therecto and verso of fol. 24 are twelve letters filled with a fleshy leaf design and with twistedor knotted strapwork. The outlines are penned in brown ink, but the foliage of the letters

IV. Design for a 'vinet'. Sloane MS. 1448A, fol. 19b.

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on the recto is modelled in blue-black ink with a brush and is further decorated withdots and small circles.

It would be very difficult to suggest a date more precise than mid-fifteenth century forthese five sets of designs, as so much work has yet to be done on manuscripts illuminatedin England at the end of the Middle Ages. Border decoration of this period is very con-servative; many of the elements to be seen in these sketches are already current as earlyas the second decade of the century^ and are still in vogue as late as the I49os.^ The'tudor' roses, in spite of their subsequent propagandist connection, need not be takenas suggesting a late date, for similar flowers may be seen in the so-called 'Big Bible ofRichard IT, and in a Wycliffite Bible in the Bodleian to which a date about 1415-30 hasbeen assigned.'' In general feeling these exuberant and lavishly ornamented designs seemmost at home in the context of the middle decades of the century, at the time of WilliamAbell and of the 'owl illuminator', studies of whom have recently much enlarged ourknowledge of the period.^

The one remaining alphabet, in many ways the most interesting feature of the manu-script, is a figure alphabet, its letters composed of combinations of men and women,animals and monsters (Pis. V and VI). It thus belongs with a group of several similar setsof late gothic ornamented letter designs - one in the north Italian model book associatedwith Giovannino de' Grassi; another of about 1400, of indeterminate but probably Germanprovenance, belonging to the Berlin Printroom; part of a third in a model book perhapscompiled in the Tyrol early in tbe fifteenth century; an engraved series by the GermanMaster 'ES ' ; and a set of Netherlandish woodcuts dated 1464.^ Both the printed seriesachieved an international circulation."^ The Sloane alphabet is not exactly parallel to anyof these others, but it does in some details seem to reflect a degree of common traditionwith the Berlin and Tyrol manuscript series and with the woodcuts of 1464. It is not akinto Giovannino de' Grassi nor to Master 'E S', which are themselves linked together.However, all these other alphabets have been dated to the fifteenth century or, at theoutside, to only very shortly before 1400. The costumes of the Sloane alphabet seem tolook to the fourteenth rather than to the fifteenth century and the particular species ofmonster included in the drawings - shaggy haired and winged, with long pointed furryears - although it does reappear in the considerably later 1464 woodcuts, is most closelyforeshadowed in French illumination of the fourteenth century. A closely related creatureis also curled around a profile portrait of Charles V of France in a charter dated 1366."None of the known alphabets has been attributed to France but in another charter ofCharles V, dated 1372, figures of the king and his brother the Due de Berri are combinedto form a letter K, indicating that the idea of a figure alphabet was indeed current inFrance at this time.'^ It is worth recalling that Betty Kurth, discussing the problems offigure alphabets in an article published more than sixty years ago, did make the sugges-tion that the tradition might ultimately be traced to French initials of the school of Jean

The Sloane figure alphabet is very simply executed in brown ink applied with a pen.Some of the figures have been given touches of extra modelling in the blue-black ink

1' • . • •

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V. First page of the figure alphabet. Sloane MS. 1448A, fol. 25.

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\\1 1

VI. Third page of the figure alphabet. Sloane MS. 1448A, fol. 26.

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which appears in the preceding alphabet, and there are some minor traces of reddish-brown ink applied with a brush, but these are certainly additions. There is considerablevariation in the appearance of individual letters, some of which are little more than simpleoutlines whilst others are quite highly finished. It may be noted that under ultra-violetlight, which imparts to this alphabet as a whole a much more polished quality than isapparent to the naked eye, the surfaces of the pages on which it is drawn are less fluorescentthan those of the remainder of the manuscript. These pages have also been quite severelycropped, losing some details in the process. It appears certain that this series of drawingsis at least dependent upon something much earlier than the other designs in the sketch-book, and it may be that the drawings themselves, which are not by the hand responsiblefor the main contents, date from an earlier period and were merely acquired by an Englishilluminator in the fifteenth century.

Nothing definite is known of the manuscript's subsequent history except that itremained in England. During the sixteenth century, like several of the other modelbooks discussed by Scheller, it seems to have sunk to the level of a nursery picture-bookand a number of pages display childish drawings of animals and people, the costumesof the latter suggesting a mid-century date.'"* There are also the signatures of severalsixteenth- and seventeenth-century owners, principally one Richard Bowie who seemsto have enjoyed demonstrating his acquaintance with secretary, court, and italic scripts,^^besides sundry scribbled notes of expenses.'^ There is no evidence to show how Sir HansSloane came by the book, which bears a succession of his press marks earlier than itspresent number.'' It was at one time, like many of the Sloane manuscripts, bound uptogether with two other volumes of compatible dimensions, Sloane MSS.901 and 1803.When they were separated in 1892, the operation was incorrectly carried out. The presentfol. 2 of Sloane 1448A, which contains an extract from Cristoforo Borri's book on CochinChina, should in fact be fol. 4 in MS. 901, and fols. 30-1, a folded sheet of vellum onceemployed as a book cover, belong with MS. 1803.'^ The twenty-seven leaves of illu-minator's sketches thus stand in isolation.

This is only the second working notebook of an English medieval artist to come tolight, the first being the compilation in the Pepysian Library at Magdalene College,Cambridge, which seems to be datable to the latter part of the fourteenth century.'^ Thetwo are designed to serve very different purposes, the Pepysian manuscript being almostentirely concerned with pictorial subjects which may well have been intended for theuse of a wall or glass painter, whilst the Sloane, as we have seen, is devoted solely to thedecoration of a book. In this its closest known counterpart is the mid-fifteenth-centurymodel book in G6ttingen.^° However, the purpose of the Gottingen book is to impart,by means of very exact examples coupled with descriptive text, a practical knowledge ofmethod, whilst the Sloane sketches appear to represent a stage in a particular individual'screative process.

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1 I am indebted to my colleague Hilton Kelliherfor bringing this manuscript to my notice. It hasbeen in the national collection ever since theBritish Museum was founded on the basis ofSir Hans Sloane's collections in 1753. Othersurviving medieval model books are detailed byR. W. Scheller, A Survey of Medieval ModelBooks (igt^).

2 For contrast see Add. MS. 27869, a scrapbookof alphabets and scripts compiled by FrancescoAlunno of Ferrara, working in Venice early inthe sixteenth century. His huge selection ofpossible models includes both manuscript andprinted letters.

3 The letters of this principal series occur at fols.3b-s, 6, 7-8b, gb, 10, i i - i2b , 14, 15b, i6b, 17,17b, 20b, 27b, and 29b.

4 For the use of this term see Margaret Rickert'schapter on illumination in J. M. Manly and EdithRickert, The Text of the Canterbury Tales^ i(1940), 561-83.

5 See the so-called 'Big Bible of Richard H \ RoyalMS. I E. ix, or the Coucher Book of FurnessAbbey, Add. MS. 33244, which was written in1412.

6 See Royal MS. 2 B. xv, dated by textual evidenceto 1495-1510, or the late additions to the 'GoldenBook of St. Albans', Cotton MS. Nero D. vii,including (at fol. 47b) that for Abbot ThomasRamryge, who was not elected till 1492.

7 See respectively M. J. Rickert, The ReconstructedCarmelite Missal {i<)$2), pi. Iv, and O. Pacht andJ. J. G. Alexander, Illuminated Manuscripts in theBodleian Library., Oxford., iii {1973), no. 880,reproduced on pi. lxxxiv.

8 See J. J. G. Alexander, 'William Abell "lymnour"and 15th century English illumination', Kunst-historische Forschungen Otto Pdcht zu seinem jo.Ceburtstag (1973), pp. 166-72, and Kathleen L.Scott, 'A mid-fifteenth-century English illumi-nating shop and its customers', Journal of theWarburg and Courtauid Institutes^ XXXI (1968),170-96.

9 Figure alphabets in general have been examinedin Dietmar Debes, Das Figuren-Alphabet, 1968(in Beitrdge zur Geschichte des BuchwesenSy MI.7-134). This includes all the series cited, withthe exception of that in the Tyrol model book,numbered respectively 658, 669, 670, and 671.The model book of Giovannino de' Grassi andthe Tyrol book are nos. 21 and 24 in Scheller,op.cit., both with reproductions. Again with the

exception of the Tyrol model book, these alpha-bets are all conveniently reproduced in extensoin Massin, Letter and Image (1970), pis. 148-60.The manuscript belonging to the Berlin Print-room has apparently been missing since thelast war. For the surviving fragments of an earlyfourteenth-century German figure alphabet in arather different tradition, see the exhibition cata-logue Recent Acquisitions and Promised Gifts, TheNational Gallery of Art, Washington {1974),

PP-33-4-10 The alphabet of 1464 was engraved by the south

German Master of the Banderolles during thesecond half of the fifteenth century and wasdrawn upon by the French workshop of JeanBourdichon, by the English artist of MS.Ashmole 1504 at Oxford, and by Robert Jonesfor his book of sample scripts now L. 2090-1937in the Victoria and Albert Museum Library. Thealphabet of Master 'E S' was also used byBourdichon. See Debes, op. cit., nos. 660 ff. and670 ff.

11 Reproduced in Claire Richter Sherman, ThePortraits of Charles V of France {1969), pi-74.

12 Reproduced in Millard Meiss, French Paintingin the time of Jean de Berry: the late fourteenthcentury and the Patronage of the Duke (1967),fig-475-

13 Betty Kurth, 'Ein gotisches Figurenalphabetaus dem Ende des XIV. Jahrhunderts und derMeister E.S. \ Mitteilungen der Gesellschaft furvervtelfdltigende Kunst {Beilage der 'GraphischenKiinste') (1912), pp. 45-60.

14 The sixteenth-century drawings occur at fols.8b, 9, 9b, 10, lib, 13b, 15, 16, 17, 20, 21, and26b.

15 Richard Bowie signed in all three scripts at fol. 8and at fol. 26b, and in secretary at fol. 29. Thenames of William Brome (fol. 3), JohannesFramyng (fol. 4), John Humfrey who 'wd knowehis addycon' (fol. 20b), Robert Johnson (fol.27b), and 'Ex dono Magistri Wade' (fol. 29)also appear.

16 At fols. 18, 28, and 29.17 i.e. Min. 152, Min. 266, and MS. 1329.18 Sloane MSS. 901, 1448A, and 1803 share a con-

tinuous foliation in red ink and are numberedconsecutively, also in red ink, i, 2, and 3. Theyare described as bound together in the hand-written catalogue of the Sloane Collection, com-piled between 1831 and 1840, which is availablein the Manuscripts Students' Room of the

British Library. MS. 901 contains a series of 19 See M. R.James,'An English Medieval Sketch-extracts written in the same hand as fol. 2 in book, no. 1916 in the Pepysian Library,MS. 1448A. MS. 1803 corresponds exactly in Magdalene College, Cambridge', Walpolesize and in the positions of old sewing holes with Society, xiii (1924-5).fols. 30-1 in MS. 1448A, which also bear two 20 See H. Lehmann-Haupt, The Gottingen Modelinscriptions in the hand of the other manuscript. Book (i97t).