Ways to the Illuminated book

In June 2011, an international colloquium on `Production Conditions in Illumination of the Medieval and Early Modern Periods` was held at the Institute for Art History of Vienna University, organised by members of the research projects based in the Pächt Archive. Ten of the fourteen papers given on this occasion have been reworked for appearance in the present volume, and are supplemented by two further contributions. The result is a collection of essays which includes new findings on individual works and artists, but also propagates a research approach that can be seen as particularly productive and forward-looking. The conditions under which books were produced have formed a central theme of codicological research, and have also played a consistent role in art historical research on illumination. The most comprehensive publication on the subject was presented by Jonathan Alexander (Medieval Illuminators and Their Methods of Work, New Haven and London 1992). While Alexander concentrated on the technical side of the production process and investigated its impact on illuminators, the focus of the Vienna conference was on cultural and social factors - the environment of the illuminators, their working conditions in the broadest sense. Various methodological approaches were tested and applied to concrete examples in order to demonstrate that research on creative conditions can lead to considerable improvements in our understanding of illumination. As several of the contributions show, the decisive factors bearing on the form and contents of book decoration included patronal structures and the working and living conditions of the illuminators - aspects on which the plentiful written sources of the thirteenth to fifteenth centuries provide detailed information. These sources and certain works reveal that book production and reception had a superregional character, meaning that illuminators were forced to react to an extensive network of interests and requirements. This could have an impact on the style and iconography of figural representations, as much as on collaboration within ateliers or temporarily formed working groups. Further areas discussed in the present volume include the effect of printing on the working conditions of illuminators, and, in the concluding essay, the gradually emerging changes of interest, problems of comprehension, and reinterpretations that led to alterations during the copying of texts and their decoration, or in the course of decade-long work on a single project.