Please check out the two links I have added that have digitized medieval manuscripts on them.  I believe one site is new; Catalogue of Digitized Medieval Manuscripts, and one has been around for a while: The Digital Scriptorium. They are both fantastic sources, and what is nice, is that there is documentation of where to find these manuscripts.  Again, please share any time you have visited a special collection and seen a medieval manuscript.  What were your thoughts?  What did you see? What impressed you most?

I am still looking for other artists to share their work on this blog.  If you know any artists that have created new work from medieval manuscripts, please send my blog to them in the chance that they might want to talk about their work here.

Julie

For those of you that are curious, you may notice that the faces and hands of the people in the patches are not rippled, as with the Laid stitch.  That is because I use the Split stitch to create more realistic-looking faces and hands. I did try a couple of stitches with Laid stitch on the faces, and found them to look distorted. I also learned that in order for the faces and hands to look better, I had to go to one strand or two, not the typical 3 strands that I use throughout the rest of the patch.  Anything that needs great detail requires less strands.  I also use the Stem stitch to outline the images, and to help me give the picture more structure before I fill in the areas with color.  Many of the images I have ironed on have come out smeared or not clear, so outlining the entire picture first, has helped me keep the picture more true.  I don’t like to waste material or transfer paper, or ink, so when a picture isn’t as clear as I’d like it, I outline it to see if I can still use it, before I trash it and start over.

Please ask questions and send me ideas of other art mediums to talk about.  On this blog, I welcome you to teach others what you know and what you love in the medieval art/history realm.

Julie

I thought I might want to explain how I came about using the colors that I do in the embroidery patches.  First of all, many of the first images I saw of the Cantigas miniatures were in black and white.  Later, I found some pictures that looked as if the background colors were pink or light blue.  As more authors researching this manuscript actually traveled to Spain and purchased recent photos of the images, I could begin to understand that the pink was actually faded red, and that most of the blue backgrounds were a darker blue.  No matter, my project had begun and I have chosen a bright pink back ground for the paled red images, and a light blue background for the blue ones.  It works out nice as with a lighter background the bolder colors stand out quite well.  I have further ventured to add more color in the images, as it seems that the majority of the images in the Cantigas miniatures were mainly red and blue, with some black and white.  I decided that if the artists back then had a multitude of colors to choose from, such as I do today, they would have used them.  Thus, I use a splendid variety of colors that often do not mimic the absolute color truth from the originals. 

Please comment if you are compelled to.

Happy New Year!

Julie

Keller, John E. and Cash, Annette, G.  Daily Life Depicted in the Cantigas de Santa Maria. Lexington: The University Press of Kentucky. 1998.

Montagu, Jeremy. The World of Medieval & Renaissance Musical Instruments. New York: The Overlook Press. 1976. 

Sahs, Curt. The Rise of Music in the Ancient World East and West. New York: W.W. Norton & Company: 1943. 

Smith, Bradley. Spain: A History in Art. Garden City, New York: Doubleday & Company. 

Starkie, Walter. Spain: A Musician’s Journey Through Time and Space. Geneva, Switzerland. Editions Rene Kister. 1958.

Wilson, Erica. Erica Wilson’s Embroidery Book. New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons: 1973.

http://retrokat.com/medieval/

Christian and Moor musicians playing guitar-like instruments

This picture I call Christian and Moor Playing Guitar-Like Instruments, for I don’t believe I have found titles for each of these miniatures. I have seen this image in several different books and on web sites, and each time I saw it, the eyes of the Moor musician were scratched out. It was a thrilling experience to put his eyes back in as I embroidered him in this patch. My favorite resource for this image I found as a tile that was tipped-in to the book. The book is volume one of a 2-book set entitled: Spain: A Musician’s Journey through time and space by Walter Starkie.

This picture is actually a fifth of the original. I took a long image from Las Cantigas de Santa Maria that depicts King Alfonso the Wise directing his musicians and scribes as he writes a cantigas for the Virgin Mary. This panel is of some of the musicians with the center image being of the king.

Scribe taking direction from King Alfonso the Wise

King Alfonso the Wise directing his scribes and musicians

This is the picture of King Alfonso the Wise directing his scribes and musicians. I am very impressed with the artists’ paintings in this manuscript and have thoroughly enjoyed reading about this king, the music of his era, and embroidering the patches from the miniatures. This image and the one above it I have found in black and white as well in color, in many of the resources listed in the Resources panel of this blog. However, the image I ended up using came from the book: The Learned King: The Reign of Alfonso X of Castile, by Joseph F. O’Callaghan.

Christians playing viol-like instruments

I call this patch; Two Christians playing Viol-like Instruments. This back ground has always been hard for me to capture, as based on the quality of the scan, I may or may not get a design that is clear enough to embroider. When I look at these patches I sometimes think that they are crude and not clear enough. However, as the scanning technology and graphic arts software improve and become more affordable for me, I feel that the images will become clearer and thus easier to embroider. This image I found in the book: The World of Medieval and Renaissance Musical Instruments by Jeremy Montagu.

Las Cantigas de Santa Maria is an amazing manuscript that tells us about the people of that time and region, giving us not only colorful images of people, animals, buildings, clothing, and traditions, it also gives us music that can be played and learned today. There are pages of poems, songs, and musical notation that have been translated and learned, and recorded on DVD for those interested. It is a wealth of knowledge, so much so that there is a Centre for the Study of the Cantigas de Santa Maria of Oxford University, created in 2005. Look for the link on the side panel under Related Links.

The Laid stitch is simply a satin stitch with spaced-out threads laid vertically to the satin stitch, and couched down. This gives a rippling effect over the entire image. It also strengthens the area, so in many cases in this time period, this stitch was also used to develop patches. These beautiful patches would be applied to clothing, outlive the clothing, and be removed and reattached to new cloths. My stitches are significantly more even and tight than those found in the Bayeux Tapestry as I didn’t have a king demanding that my work be turned out by a certain deadline.

I displayed the embroidered patches from the Cantigas in an exhibit in the Norlin Library at the University of Colorado-Boulder.  The comments were quite encouraging, as the campus community shared their amazement of the images from such an old piece of history, as well as the beautiful embroidered stitches that allowed them to be hung in a display.  The comments also related their desire to see more art work from our history, and enjoyed knowing how these artistic skills can be learned and the local organizations and guilds that are around to provide assistance in learning them.