[Gutenberg 45129] • The History, Theory, and Practice of Illuminating / Condensed from 'The Art of Illuminating' by the same illustrator and author

The History, Theory, and Practice of Illuminating - Condensed from 'The Art of Illuminating' by the same illustrator and author by M. Digby Wyatt

IN the following pages an attempt has been made to concentrate into limited dimensions that which has generally been treated very voluminously. Few authors, who have tried both, will feel inclined to deny, that it is a much more difficult task to compress a great subject into a little book successfully, than it is to expand a little subject into a great book. Where materials of the highest interest, historically, artistically, and intellectually, abound, the danger is lest suppression and condensation may not break the links essential to bind a perspicuous narrative together. I must, therefore, on these grounds claim the indulgence of the reader, who may, I trust, be induced by the very imperfections of my story, to recur to the pages of those more copious and learned writers on the subjects, who have bestowed upon its elucidation long lives of exemplary and pertinacious industry.

Before, however, entering on my theme, it is my duty to point out to the reader, that although, for popular convenience and simplicity, it has been deemed expedient to divide the history of the Art of Illuminating from the theory of its use and practice, I have considered that each of the subdivided parts would be made more valuable by association, and by being made mutually suggestive and illustrative—by being, in fact, cast as two parts of one work, rather than as two separate works. I have not, therefore, hesitated to refer in this, the "Historical Manual," to the historical interest of plates contained in the technical, nor in the "Technical Manual" to the technical interest of plates contained in the historical. Much, indeed, of the matter contained in both should be considered as common to the two. Thus the ancient technical processes are no less historically interesting, than they may be likely, by a judicious revival of such as may be worthy, to prove practically valuable in the present day. Again, whatever proficiency a student may attain in the manipulation of his or her drawing, gilding, or painting, it will be in vain to hope to be enabled to produce a work of art which shall be satisfactory to the educated eye and taste, until a very considerable acquaintance has been made with the peculiarities of the various styles in which our forefathers delighted. No originality can ever be permanently agreeable which does not discard the precise conventional form of a period, which is but a mode or transient fashion, in favour of the principles which pervade all synchronous works of art, and which, transmute them as we may, must ever remain permanent through all time. Historically we should remember that miniature ornament of every period reflects on a diminished scale, and frequently in a highly concentrated form, the leading spirit which may have pervaded the greater revolutions of monumental art. Owing to the license which the diminished scale afforded, the imagination of the artist in these works was restricted by none of those material impediments which, in the execution of the major monuments of art, protracted the realization of the changing fashions of the day, frequently until long after the period when the original impulse may have been communicated to the art in which those variations were possibly but transient fluctuations.