![]() ![]() Every one of them was either created to be cruel or was used in a cruel way against Christ, suggesting that as creators, we are only capable of making harmful objects. The arma Christi are man-made, except for Peter’s rooster, although he is the reason the rooster crows. These instruments symbolized Christ’s triumph over death in the early Middle Ages, but by the twelfth century, they came to be “mementos” of the Passion for us to meditate on Jesus’s suffering (Cooper and Denny-Brown 5). On my latest count and consultation with The Arma Christi in Medieval and Early Modern Material Culture, I brought that number up to thirteen, with two obscure symbols making the total fifteen: the hay fork and three gold containers. From my initial count, I found four major symbols. Wing’s depiction of the arma Christi on 32r is almost like an Easter egg hunt - you have to find them all and figure out what parts of the Passion they’re referring to. It displays a variant of Wing’s floral and gold signature border. Another modern border by Wing, 71v, depicts the five wounds of Christ and ends the entire section of the Passion, coming just before the Mass of the Five Wounds. 32r and 68r act essentially as book-ends as they start the first and last hours, but this isn’t where our picture story ends. 68r, an original border ending the Hours with Compline, shows grotesques dancing around the text. On 32r, Wing illuminates the arma Christi, instruments used in Christ’s torture this folio correlates to the hour of Matins, opening the Hours of the Passion. I’ll be looking at three different border illuminations that tell Jesus’s Passion through illustration and order, and I’ll tackle it in order. Wing’s floral imagery will be important to the Hours of the Passion’s illumination framework.īefore we go any further discussing Wing’s borders, a couple of things need to be noted. Through these examples and other borders of MS W.441, we can see that he utilizes bright colors and subtle shadowing to make these lifelike images pop. Wing’s artistic calling card is beautiful floral illuminations on striking gold backgrounds. ![]() In addition to MS W.441, he illuminated borders for Cambridge, Fitzwilliam Museum MS 193, and Yale, Beinecke MS 287A, only a few on a list of his contributions. He also worked for other commissioners as a professional facsimilist, and a pretty convincing one at that (Furlong 7). Wing was no stranger to working with medieval manuscripts, even “damaged surviving manuscripts,” for Jarman (Backhouse 80). William Caleb Wing, the talented modern illuminator of this manuscript, engaged with original medieval borders to create border illuminations and full-page miniatures. Many of these pretty illuminations, however, were commissioned by John Boykett Jarman in the nineteenth century. Īccording to the manuscript description, the text was written in the sixteenth century in Flanders. The second major deviation in this manuscript is the illuminations. ![]() MS W.441 instead centers around the Hours of the Passion, making it more Christ-based (for more on this absence in manuscripts, see Christian Gallichio’s post ). For one, this Book of Hours lacks the very thing that makes Books of Hours what they are: the Hours of the Virgin (Weick 60 Reinburg 209). 12v–13r.Welcome to the strangeness of Baltimore, Walters Art Gallery MS W.441 ! A few things set this manuscript apart from the everyday Book of Hours. Gallois, so-called Naives Hours, 1839 – 42, Paris. Heures françoises et latines pour Madame L. The Naives book of hours, on the other hand, was commissioned by Jules Gallois, Count of Naives, for his wife, as a devotional work, though also supporting his claim to descend from noble medieval ancestors. The Missal was presented in 1844 to the Count of Chambord, then head of the House of Bourbon, by the Legitimist Ladies of France, who were in favour of a return to monarchy. Two high-end French manuscripts stand out as relatively recent acquisitions: the Naives Hours and the politically-charged Chambord Missal. Pugin and Phoebe Traquair are present in the library, but also some manuscripts reflecting the popular taste for illumination in Victorian England, such as illuminated addresses commissioned for ceremonial occasions, and instances of amateur illumination. Owing to the time and circumstances of its foundation, the museum holds examples of manuscript illumination exemplifying the revival of interest for anything medieval in the 19th century. ![]()
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