It was a great experience to look at the Persian manuscripts in class on Wednesday morning. I appreciated getting to look at them because it broadened my knowledge on the different types of style for illuminated manuscripts. From the Book of Hours and Les Tres Riches Heures, illuminated manuscripts to me seemed to follow the general mise-en-page of the template we were given in class. An image would take up all or part of the page. The images of the Limbourg brothers are particularly fascinating because there are multiple scenes going on within one image. A decorated of historiated letter would begin a section of text with rubric marking different sections. Marginalia, sometimes gilded, would go next to the text and create a sort of border. All of these aspects made the page seem very solid and filled with color and text. The Persian manuscripts to me seemed to contrast this. Most the pages had one image that was their focus point, surrounded by the text. Only one of the pages we saw had a marginalia. Of course, we only saw four samples and other texts could be very different. Another point the was made Professor Serrano was their exposure to elements. The Book of Hours pages’ are so colorful because they were closed off to the elements while the Persian pages were not. Perhaps these pages were more colorful and seemed to “fill” the space like the European texts before they faded over time.
These similarities and differences will be interesting to follow as we continue to read My Name is Red. It was partly the passage on the Venetian portrait in the palazzo that inspired me to about this topic of different styles. I loved how Enishte Effendi described how detailed it was and, that you could recognize the gentlemen in a crowd by going off of that painting. He waanted to do the same in a portrait of the Sultan because he was so inspired. While each region has their own style of manuscripts, there are definitely some over arching themes that can be seen in all of them.
