Painting the page in the age of print: Central European manuscript illumination of the fifteenth century

Abstract

"The history of the book in the fifteenth century is especially associated in German-speaking countries with Gutenberg's invention of printing with movable type. Over a century of scholarship has tended, often in rather gratuitous fashion, to dismiss the majority of illuminated manuscripts produced in central Europe between around 1400 and the Reformation as mediocre manifestations of a culture in decline. This book --originally published in German to accompany a series of exhibitions in Germany, Austria, and Switzerland from 2015 to 2017-- was written to challenge these prejudices and the weight of tradition which they represent. It contains four wide-ranging art historical essays which for the first time give an overview of fifteenth-century illumination in Central Europe."--

Contents

Manuscript illumination in Central Europe and its historical context / Robert Suckale, Gude Suckale-Redlefsen -- Old wine in new bottles? : the illumination of religious manuscripts / Jeffrey F. Hamburger -- Between faith, myth, and knowledge : manuscript illumination in secular literature / Gude Suckale-Redlefsen -- Colour for the black art / Eberhard König.