From animal to page
Most medieval manuscripts were written on parchment, a writing surface made from animal skin. Calf, sheep and goat were all common. The finest, smoothest and palest sheets are often called vellum, a term that originally meant calfskin, though people today use these words loosely, and the line between them is not always clear.
Making parchment was a skilled craft in its own right. In broad terms, the steps were:
- The skin was soaked and the hair loosened, often with a lime bath.
- It was scraped to remove hair and flesh.
- It was stretched tightly on a frame and scraped again with a curved knife while drying, so that it dried flat and taut.
- The surface was smoothed and rubbed with a fine abrasive such as pumice, and sometimes dusted with chalk to take up grease.
The result was not perfectly uniform. Many pages show natural flaws such as holes, scars or vein marks, and scribes often wrote around them. A sheet was then folded and cut to form a bifolium, and several of these were nested to make a gathering. A large book could use the skins of many animals, which is part of why books were expensive. Paper arrived in Europe during the later Middle Ages and was used for cheaper books, but parchment stayed the choice for luxury volumes.
Ruling and writing
Before writing, the scribe or a helper marked out the page. Lines were ruled with a hard point, a lead point, or ink, so the text would sit straight. Small prick marks in the margin often show where the ruling was guided. The scribe then cut a quill pen, usually from a goose feather, and copied the text.
Ink was commonly made in two ways. One was carbon ink, based on soot and a binder such as gum. The other, popular for much of the period, was iron gall ink, which was made from oak galls, an iron salt and gum arabic. The writing often starts out dark and may turn brown with age. The scribe left spaces for initials and illustrations, and sometimes wrote a tiny guide letter for the artist to follow.
The pigments
Medieval painters drew on a wide palette of mineral, plant and manufactured colors. A few of the best known follow.
| Color | Common source |
|---|---|
| Red | Vermilion (a mercury-based mineral compound), red lead, or plant and insect dyes |
| Blue | Azurite, or ultramarine ground from lapis lazuli |
| Green | Verdigris (a copper-based pigment), or green earths |
| Yellow | Orpiment, a mineral, or plant-based yellows |
| White | Lead white |
| Black | Carbon-based pigment |
Ultramarine was costly because lapis lazuli had to be brought from far away and the pigment was laborious to extract. For that reason, patrons sometimes specified it in contracts, and it was often reserved for important figures such as the Virgin Mary’s robe. Several of these materials, such as vermilion, red lead and orpiment, are toxic by modern standards, though medieval workers did not think of them in those terms.
To make paint, the pigment was ground into a fine powder and mixed with a binder. Common binders included egg white, known as glair, and gum arabic, a plant gum. Water-based paint of this sort dried quickly and sat on the surface of the parchment.
Gold and silver
Gold was used in two main ways.
Gold leaf is gold beaten into extremely thin sheets. To apply it, the artist first laid down a raised base, often a gesso made from plaster-like materials, sometimes with a sticky binder. The leaf was laid over it, pressed in place, and then burnished with a smooth hard tool such as a polished stone or tooth until it shone. Because the base was raised, the gold stood out slightly and caught the light. Artists could also punch or tool patterns into it.
Shell gold is gold ground to a powder and mixed with a binder, then brushed on like paint. It is thinner and less brilliant than leaf but easier to use for fine lines.
Silver was also used, though it tends to tarnish and darken with time, so pages that once looked silver may now look dull or black.
The order of work
A professional workshop worked in stages, and the order mattered. A typical sequence was as follows, though practice varied.
- Preparing the sheets and ruling the page.
- Copying the text, leaving spaces for decoration.
- Rubrication, adding headings and small red or blue letters.
- Drawing the design for initials, borders and pictures, often in a light underdrawing.
- Applying gesso and laying gold, which came before paint so burnishing would not smear the colors.
- Painting, usually beginning with large areas of color and proceeding to details.
- Outlining and finishing, adding fine lines, highlights and small touches.
- Collating and binding, assembling the gatherings and sewing them.
Some books show work stopped partway, with a finished drawing awaiting paint or a gap awaiting gold. Those incomplete pages are valuable evidence for how the stages worked.
Who did what
In a monastery, one person could handle several steps. In a lay workshop, the tasks were more often divided among specialists: a parchment maker, a scribe, a decorator and a binder, sometimes in different shops. A chief artist might paint the main picture while assistants filled in borders or backgrounds. The workshop system explains why some books show multiple hands on a single page. The training that produced these skills usually came through apprenticeship contracts and years of practice.
What survives and what we infer
Our understanding comes from the books themselves, from surviving recipe collections and treatises on art, and from modern scientific analysis. Recipes can be tricky, since they were copied and adapted over time and do not always match actual practice. Scientific testing of pigments has confirmed many of the materials described, and also found surprises. As with other crafts, there was variation by place and period, so any single description is a general picture rather than a rule.