Chapter 4

The texture lettering style (from the Lain texturum, meaning woven fabric or texture) seen in Gothic manuscripts composed of vertical strokes capped with pointed serifs was also called by other terms, which were misleading and vague. Which named was the preferred name during this time?

littera moderna

In the early 1400s, the _____, a private devotional text that contained religious texts, prayers, and calendars listing the days of the important saints, became Europes most popular book.

Book of Hours

Charlemagne mandated reform by royal edict in A.D. 789 and succeeded in reforming the alphabet with the use of four guidelines, ascenders, and defenders. The resulting uniform script, called _______, is the forerunner of our contemporary lower case alphabet.

Caroline miniscules

This manuscript style originated in Ireland and used ornate initials, diminuendo, carpet pages, and half-uncial script.

Celtic

_____ design, as seen in the Book of Durrow, is abstract and extremely complex; geometric linear patterns weave, twist, and fill the space with thick visual textures, and bright, pure colors are used in juxtaposition.

Celtic

Production of illuminated manuscripts in the scriptorium, or writing room, included the head of the scriptorium, called the scrittori, a well-educated scholar who understood Greek and Latin and functioned as both an editor and art director. The ______ was a production letterer who spent his days bent over a writing table penning page after page in a trained lettering style.

Copisti

The illustrations and decorations in illuminated manuscripts were intended to educate the reader as well as beautify the book.

True

Muhammed called upon his followers to learn to read and write, and calligraphy quickly became an important tool for government business and religion. Islamic manuscript decoration is characterized by all but one of the elements below. Which does NOT belong?

Figurative illustrations

This manuscript style used textura lettering, often in two columns. Illustrations were divided into segments by elaborate framing: figures were elongated and wore fashionable clothing.

Gothic

In the early scriptorium, the _____ was responsible for the execution of ornament and image in visual support of the text.

Illuminator

In the early fifteenth century, the Limbourg brothers created their masterpiece, _______, which included an illustrated calendar depicting the seasonal activities of each month crowned with graphic astronomical charts. They sought a convincing realism as atmospheric perspective pushed planes and volumes back in deep space.

Les tres riches heures du Duc de Berry

The invention of musical notation has also been attributed to scribes working in medieval monasteries.

True

This manuscript style was characterized by flat shapes of intense color sprinkled with stars, rosettes, polygons, or garlands, in optically contrasting colors. Decorative frames enclosed most illustrations.

Spanish pictorial expressionism

Aniconism was a common theme used in Islamic manuscripts.

True

Diminuendo is the transition from large introductory script into the smaller text.

True

Illustrations in late medieval illuminated manuscripts from the fifteenth century are characterized by elongated, vertical figures and increased naturalism.

True

Manuscripts in the ______ style were often lettered in rustic capitals in one wide column on each page, with illustrations of the same width as the text column framed in bright bands of color.

classical

The Vatican Virgil, completely Roman and pagan in its conception and execution, is an example of the _______ manuscript style. This volume, created in the late fourth or early fifth century A.D., contains two major poems by Rome s greatest poet, Publius Vergilius Maro: the Aeneid and the Georgics. The illustrations combine rustic capitals with echoes of the rich colors and illusionist space of wall frescoes of Pompeii.

classical

This manuscript style was lettered in rustic capitals in one wide columns on each page, usually above or below an illustration.

classical style

The _____ of a manuscript or book is an inscription, usually at the end, containing facts about its production.

colophon

Many examples of Moorish-influenced manuscripts from Spain, such as the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse from the Beatus of Fernando and Sancha, in which arrows pierce the hearts of nonbelievers, are texts on _________.

the Book of Relvelation

Charlemagne, King of Franks, who was declared emperor of the Holy Roman Empire by Pope Leo III on Christmas Day, A.D. 800, fostered a revival of learning and the arts. He recruited ________ to come to his palace to Aachen and establish a school and a scriptorium where master copies of important religious texts were prepared.

the English scholar Alcuin of York

During the Romanesque period (A.D. c. 1000 to 1150), which saw renewed religious fervor and even stronger feudalism, universal design characteristics seemed possible because ______.

travel increased due to the crusades and pilgrimages

So named because they were written between two guidelines that were one inch apart, _____ were rounded, freely drawn letters more suited to rapid writing.

uncials

A radical design innovation in Celtic manuscripts was using _____ to separate strings of letters into words allowing readers to recognize them more quickly.

word spaces