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The Images and Their Illustrators
There are five major illustrations in this manuscript, in addition to more than 50 shields and banners, several beasts, and dozens of roses, suns, and fetterlocks. The art historian Kathleen L. Scott has suggested that the major illustrations were probably allotted to three different artists.
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The
equestrian portrait of Edward IV sets the tone of the rest of the
manuscript, with symbols of kingship and divine intervention surrounding
the horse and rider. Edward and the face of his horse are done
in delicate pen-and-ink with faint washes added, with brilliant
colors used for the horse-trapper. Tinted pen illustrations enjoyed
considerable popularity in England during the later fifteenth century
(for two well-known examples of pen illustrations in fifteenth-century
genealogy rolls, see the Rous Rolls and the Beauchamp Pageant,
both illustrated in A. J. Pollard, Richard III and the Princes in the Tower). The equestrian portrait is not a common image in genealogical rolls, but similar imagery can be found on the Great Seals of many later medieval English kings as well as the seals of many of the nobility. Following Faye and Bond (see notes, below), Scott notes a resemblance between this portrait and the work of English illustrator Thomas Chaundler (1418-1490). |
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The first roundel, God in Majesty, may also be the work of the first artist. It is a pen-and-ink drawing over which gold leaf has been laid. Scott notes a similarity between this and one other genealogical roll, but it is otherwise an unusual subject for these manuscripts. The presentation of God within a sunburst is echoed throughout the manuscript by the repetition of Edward IV's badges, the rose-en-soleil and the sun in splendor. |
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The next two roundels (the Fall of Man and Noah's Ark) as well as the small roundels beneath them have been assigned to a second illustrator by Scott. The Fall of Man is the standard opening roundel of many of the other genealogical rolls, as well as of histories of the world from Creation to Christ that draw on the same text. Perhaps because the illustrators had created so many of these roundels, the treatment of the subject in many of the other rolls is much more polished than this rather crude and dark roundel. Iconographically, however, this roundel is unusual in three respects: the garden includes a medieval fountain, from which four streams of water representing the four rivers of the Garden of Eden pour forth; divine intervention is represented by rays emanating from a nimbus (upper left), and the serpent, instead of being head-up as in the "assembly line" roundels, is being driven headlong into a pit. Scott comments, "[this] may represent the intervention of the (royal) patron to emphasize the theme of a God who sides with the virtuous and takes action against the iniquitous." |
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Scott assigns the half-figures of the Kings and Princes to a third illustrator. These half figures, appearing behind a low wall, comments Scott, "are more accomplished, more decided in the delineation of faces and figures and in the application of color than the Adam and Eve artist."
Much of the material in this section is adapted from two articles by Kathleen L. Scott:
- Later Gothic Manuscripts, 1390-1490, A Survey of Manuscripts Illuminated in the British Isles, vol. 6 (London: Harvey Miller, 1996). vol. 2, pp 288-89, no. 104; ills. 393, 394
- "The Edward IV Roll." In James Tanis and Jennifer Thompson (eds.) Leaves of Gold: Treasures of Manuscript Illumination from Philadelphia Collections (Philadelphia, Philadelphia Museum of Art, 2000, in preparation).
See also:
- J. J. G. Alexander, Medieval Illuminators and Their Methods of Work. New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 1992.
- Faye and Bond. Supplement to the Census of Medieval and Renaissance Manuscripts in the United States and Canada. Originated by C. U. Faye; continued and edited by W. H. Bond. New York: Bibliographical Society of America: Distributed by Klaus Reprint Co., 1962.
- P.W. Hammond, A. F. Sutton, and L. Visser-Fuchs, "The Reburial of Richard, Duke of York, 21-30 July 1476," The Ricardian: Journal of the Richard III Society, Vol. 10 (December 1994) , pp. 122-65, note 58.
- A. J. Pollard, Richard III and the Princes in the Tower, Stroud and New York: Sutton Publishing and St. Martin's Press, 1991.
- Anne F. Sutton and Livia Visser-Fuchs, "Richard III's Books: Ancestry and 'True Nobility,'" The Ricardian: Journal of the Richard III Society, Vol. 9 (December 1992), pp. 343-58, note 18.
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