Images With(In) Books

Francisco Goya’s Los Caprichos, in their original form, were comprised of simply the plate and a cursive caption underneath each illustration, such as “How they pluck her!” or “Out hunting for teeth”. The audience was left with no other means by which to extract meaning from the grotesque caricatures. In my own perception of the pictures, despite the knowledge that each scene was in some way a cynical social commentary, I would have found it extraordinarily difficult to make sense of what I was seeing without the aid of the descriptions beside each picture. I am unsure as to whether the public at the time would have been privy to Goya’s meaning based on simply intuition and critical thinking skills.

The aforementioned descriptions are characteristic of more modern editions of Los Caprichos and explain Goya’s intended criticism. However, once I considered the plates in the context of their artist’s intention, they became more than amusing grotesqueries – they were disturbingly accurate accounts of social trends or cultural tendencies. The true power of his work lies within these meanings which were not accessible to me without pretext.

Monday’s class was extremely interesting. Not only did we get to see illuminated manuscripts, but we also got to view papyrus. Both of these items were very unique, and I had not seen anything like them before. I do have to say that the papyrus was a completely different texture than the illuminated manuscript paper. It was an eye-opening experience to feel the parchment. I did not realize that it would be so thick and heavy. Then again, it is made from animal skin. Furthermore, it was cool to see the illuminations and text themselves.

It is one thing to view these manuscripts on a projector, but it is a very different experience to physically interact with them. It is incredible that these manuscripts have survived so long. Also on that note, I was not expecting to be able to touch them. All of the other pages we have seen before this visit to the library restricted us from touching them. It is hard to believe that our hands coming into contact with these pages would not deteriorate them. But I am not complaining, because the experience was amazing. It is almost like I was thrown back in time and viewed these manuscripts like any other book I would regularly read.

As a few people have already stated, I really enjoyed Monday’s class in the library with the Special Collections. I’m still impressed by the fact that we were able to touch the manuscripts! Every time I’ve seen similar specimens, it has been behind a sheet of glass in a museum or library. I always pictured well-dressed professionals carefully handling the manuscripts with white-gloved hands whenever the manuscripts came out of the glass cases, but we were able to touch every item brought to class in an informal setting with bare hands. Monday’s class was a very different experience from any experience I’ve had in a museum, and it made me begin to think about how important our sense of touch is to perception. Looking at very old items in museums admittedly always leaves me with a brief urge to touch the item—to grasp something tangible from the intangible past. These manuscripts may well have been the oldest pieces of historical material I’ve ever been able to touch. I think there’s something really meaningful about being able to feel the parchment and velum between your fingers. You can imagine what it was like to pick up the music book as a member of the choir. Our interaction with the Special Collections had a similar effect on me to that of the Scriptorium workshop. It made an old history feel much more relevant and tangible.

I found the library visit on Monday very enjoyable. It was great to have an opportunity to see such ancient books in such an informal and hands on setting. I hadn’t realized how many books our library had, or that they were so accessible to students. I was especially amazed that we were allowed to touch the books ourselves. I consider them pieces of art, and art is generally put on display and not allowed to be handled. It was a great opportunity since when we had looked at illuminated pages in the Wellin, I felt distanced from them because of the setting and inability to touch the pages. In the library, I was able to better examine and appreciate the books. Being able to manually handle the books gave me a much better sense of their weight and value, since I could see and feel how much work went into them.

The large music book was very interesting to me because of its immense size. It was very different from previous books we’ve seen since it was for music and designed for many people to view at once. The sheer size of it reminded me of how much time and effort went into making these books, since each page was made from an animal skin and the book had around a hundred pages. Getting to turn the pages also made me aware of the delicacy of these books. I was glad to get to see a variety of these books.

Although Goya is situated between the classicalist and modernist eras of art, there is something about his work that strikes me as being medieval in a certain way. Perhaps it is because the grotesque figures in his etchings remind me of medieval depictions of demons and some of the more imaginative pieces of marginalia I’ve seen, or perhaps it is because, like miniaturists of the medieval period, Goya works references to famous figures or events into his artwork, albeit in a much less flattering light. In transitioning from the medieval to the modern, I find myself looking for ways to understand the illuminations in reference to Goya and Goya in reference to the illuminations. This of course raises the question of how illuminations and illustrations are connected, but also how they differ.

While we comfortably use ‘illustration’ when referring to miniatures, the converse is not true; we do not typically refer to illustrations as ‘illuminations.’ Though the two words seem to share common referential ground, there is still a distinction of some kind. Etymologically speaking, ‘illumination’ comes from the Latin stem word illuminare (to throw into light, make bright), which comes from the assimilated form of in- and lumen (light). “Illustration” comes from the Latin illustrationem, meaning both “vivid representation,” “to illuminate” and “to explain or make clear” (Online Etymology Dictionary). It is clear that the two forms of art have the basis of light- throwing light, making bright, enlightening. However, it seems that there is a difference in how each art form would be used. The root of ‘illumination’ reduces to “in + light” whereas illustration is explained in terms of illumination with the added definition of “to explain or make clear.” The difference as I see it is that the illumination could be a depiction of a scene within a manuscript, but moreso it was there to beautify the manuscript, make it radiant and ‘enlightened.’ This is not to say that illumination is purely decorative and not depictive, but rather that illumination sheds a different kind of light than illustration. Illustration sheds light for the benefit and ‘enlightenment’ of the reader who needs something clarified. Interestingly, a definition of ‘illustration’ from the 1580s calls it an “act of making clear in the mind,” which definitively roots the word in the mental senses (Online Etymology Dictionary). So the type of enlightenment and whether it is on behalf of the text or the reader is perhaps the most pertinent difference between illumination and illustration. It also explains, in my own opinion, the seemingly medieval influences in Goya.

As a commentator, Goya was seeking to enlighten his readers and reveal to them certain critical aspects of their society. Yet calling him an illustrator seems slightly misleading because his works aren’t associated with a text that needs clarification. They stand on their own, much as some of the illuminations we have seen are artworks that are related to but not dependent on texts. However, whereas only the wealthy could own illuminated manuscripts, Goya’s work is social commentary, frequently depicting the underprivileged, and was meant for the public’s edification. Someone mentioned Goya’s art being ‘vulgar,’ which draws to mind the linguistic connotations: the vulgate refers to the language of the masses as opposed to the Latin used by elites. For this reason, ‘vulgar’ can mean “belonging to the masses.” Goya’s prints have the same artistic independence from text as illuminations and also act to enlighten, explain or make clear the way illustrations do; they are situated between these medieval and modern modes of depiction and could perhaps best be called ‘vulgar illuminations.’

Similar to our class period of painting, I would say that Monday’s class session where we looked at the Special Collections has also been another favorite. By viewing some of the treasures maintained in Special Collections, I was struck with appreciation for how much effort goes into the construction of an ancient manuscript. I found it particularly interesting to see the book whose cover had bent over time from age, as well as the various Atlases showing the perception of the time of the world. Since most of the works that we saw were Western, it would be interesting to compare the types of Atlases we saw to ones from the East. Did they have the same perceptions of the world?

Viewing the treasures in Special Collections also brought great pride and appreciation for being a Hamilton student and having access to articles of such worth. For example, Prof. Serrano mentioned that these types of works are usually only available to graduate students, who have to wear gloves to get a close look at the materials. There is something surreal about being able to touch the covers and the pages, feeling the differences in the wooden covers and papyrus/animal skin/parchment paper pages. I felt lucky to be doing something so worthwhile on a Monday morning at 8:30 am…

I think this workshop was very eye-opening. I could barely figure out how to trace a pre-made historiated letter, let alone sketch it by hand. If it took so much time and concentration just to do my one, silly little letter, how much more difficult must it have been for the monks who had to blend their own paints, make their own paper, craft their own writing utensils, draw their own designs, and sit in the middle of a freezing room?

Can you even imagine how frustrating it would’ve been to mess up? Every action must have been carefully thought through. We’re so lucky that we have resources that make messing up irrelevant. We can just grab another piece of paper or remix some paint. These days, so much of the creation process is streamlined that even when we create we’re only doing half the work. Of course, it’s unlikely that one scribe would make all of his supplies, paper, and paint every time–we learned about how they divided up the work. But they definitely knew the value of their materials.

Meanwhile, we can’t even be bothered to throw unused paper in the recycling bin.

Creating an illuminated letter is not easy. I came in with some basic ideas of what to draw, but when I changed my mind about what letter I wanted to do, I had to start fresh. I could not come up with any interesting ideas, so I flipped through books for a while to find inspiration. However, once I got started (and with Gregorian chants in the background), I felt very focused on my letter. During the process, I noticed that I began thinking about each piece of the letter as its own part, trying to perfect the curves and colors in that one area. This is why my letter turned out a little disconnected – it doesn’t flow like the ones we’ve seen in class.When it came to applying the gold leaf, I was hopeless. I’m sure the application process was different in the medieval times, but this was challenging! The gold wouldn’t peel correctly, and ended up sticking in areas I didn’t want it to. This part was of the process was difficult, but it made me laugh because I realized how much more difficult it must have been for an illuminator who took his work so seriously. I really enjoyed the scriptorium project and liked this different kind of class.

I really enjoyed this exercise because I appreciated the meditative nature of the work. I was noticing that on the whole, the class chose to magnify their letter to fill the majority of the page, which I think was clever considering the water color is effectively impossible to control in small spaces or on wet paper. However, I chose to make mine in miniature scale because I wanted to see what that was like. Aside from having to pick up a lot pigment to thicken the paint for an semblance of control, the focus and energy it takes to work on such a small scale is enormous. It was centering because it was a creative reflective activity, and simultaneously performative because the need for perfection under the  understanding that the illumination will be viewed by someone.

The scriptorium experience really helped bring to light  amount of intensity and patience it takes to create an illuminated manuscript. Over the course of creating my “masterpiece”, it became clear that I was much better at portraying some of art better than others. For example, I was very slow at coming up with an idea for a design, as there seemed to be so many potential ideas, it was difficult to hone in on one. My letters were my strong-suit, which would make sense because I have practiced drawing my letters more than I have any other images. By the end of the class period, I was very pleased with parts of my painting, but very disappointed with others (my painting was rather poor). My personal experience showed me that I am more skilled in some areas art compared to others. It allowed me to be truly amazed at these illuminated manuscripts as some were created by one individual, and this individual must have been talented in all aspects of the art form. However, it seems that many of these illuminated manuscripts were collaborated on within their given practice, and this makes sense to me considering my experience painting showed me that I am better at some things than others, and collaboration allows for greater specialization and therefore a chance at producing a higher grade of artwork.