![]() ![]() "Only scribes and painters of exceptional skill would have been entrusted with its use," says Alison Beach of Ohio State University, a historian on the project. The use of ultramarine pigment made from lapis lazuli was reserved, along with gold and silver, for the most luxurious manuscripts. "Based on the distribution of the pigment in her mouth, we concluded that the most likely scenario was that she was herself painting with the pigment and licking the end of the brush while painting," states co-first author Monica Tromp of the Max Planck Institute for the Science of Human History. "We examined many scenarios for how this mineral could have become embedded in the calculus on this woman's teeth," explains Radini. Careful analysis using a number of different spectrographic methods - including energy dispersive X-ray spectroscopy (SEM-EDS) and micro-Raman spectroscopy - revealed the blue pigment to be made from lapis lazuli. "It came as a complete surprise - as the calculus dissolved, it released hundreds of tiny blue particles," recalls co-first author Anita Radini of the University of York. The only remarkable aspect to her remains was the blue particles found in her teeth. She had no particular skeletal pathologies, nor evidence of trauma or infection. She was 45-60 years old when she died around 1000-1200 AD. One woman in the cemetery was found to have numerous flecks of blue pigment embedded within her dental calculus. The monastery is believed to have housed approximately 14 religious women from its founding until its destruction by fire following a series of 14th century battles. ![]() The earliest known written records from the monastery date to 1244 AD. Few records remain of the monastery and its exact founding date is not known, although a women's community may have formed there as early as the 10th century AD. Their analysis suggests that the woman was likely a painter of richly illuminated religious texts.Īs part of a study analyzing dental calculus - tooth tartar or dental plaque that fossilizes on the teeth during life - researchers examined the remains of individuals who were buried in a medieval cemetery associated with a women's monastery at the site of Dalheim in Germany. Follow him on Twitter at on Faceboo k.In a study published in Science Advances, an international team of researchers led by the Max Planck Institute for the Science of Human History and the University of York shed light on the role of women in the creation of such manuscripts with a surprising discovery - the identification of lapis lazuli pigment embedded in the calcified dental plaque of a middle-aged woman buried at a small women's monastery in Germany around 1100 AD. 1450)īased in Seoul, Colin Marshall writes and broadcasts on cities and culture. His projects include the book The Stateless City: a Walk through 21st-Century Los Angeles and the video series The City in Cinema. The Aberdeen Bestiary, One of the Great Medieval Illuminated Manuscripts, Now Digitized in High Resolution & Made Available Onlineġ,600-Year-Old Illuminated Manuscript of the Aeneid Digitized & Put Online by The Vaticanĭante’s Divine Comedy Illustrated in a Remarkable Illuminated Medieval Manuscript (c. How the Brilliant Colors of Medieval Illuminated Manuscripts Were Made with Alchemyīehold the Beautiful Pages from a Medieval Monk’s Sketchbook: A Window Into How Illuminated Manuscripts Were Made (1494) To fully understand the making of the devices we use to read electronically today would require years and years of study, and so there’s something satisfying in the fact that we can grasp so much about the making of illuminated manuscripts with relative ease: see, for example, the two-minute Getty video just above, “The Structure of a Medieval Manuscript.” A fuller understanding of the nature of illuminated manuscripts, both in the sense of their construction and their place in society, makes for a fuller understanding of how rare the chance was to own beautiful books of their kind in their own time - and how much rarer the exact combination of skills needed to create that beauty. Most of us in the developed world can now buy one of those, but the non-institutional patrons willing and able to commission the most splendid illuminated manuscripts in the Middle Ages and early Renaissance included mostly “society’s rulers: emperors, kings, dukes, cardinals, and bishops.” Some illuminated manuscripts also bear elaborate cover designs sculpted of precious metal, but even without those, these elaborate books - what with all the art and craft that went into them, not to mention all those pricey materials - came out even more valuable, at the time, than even the most coveted laptop, phone, reader, or other consumer electronic device today. ![]()
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