Celebrating the two-hundredth anniversary of the Fitzwilliam Museum, this important catalogue heralds the first exhibition to give prominence to a relatively new discipline in art history – the art and science of colour in illuminated manuscripts. It is based on a programme of technical and scholarly investigation which further extends our knowledge of medieval and Renaissance painting and traces the development of colour in European illumination over the course of ten centuries which saw artists developing towards a wider range of pigments and ever more sophisticated techniques. Underpinning much of this research is cutting-edge, scientific analysis: ‘Miniare’ is the name given to a project initiated by the Department of Manuscripts at the Fitzwilliam Museum in 2012 involving advanced scientific analyses that permit the non-invasive investigation of illuminators’ techniques and pigments. The importance of integrating these ground-breaking technical investigations with art-historical research is recognised and attested by the bibliographies accompanying the essays and manuscript entries which further elucidate artists’ techniques and their use of colour. The catalogue is divided into fourteen main sections, comprising authoritative essays on key aspects of colour: it traces the development of colour theory with reference to philosophical works; it discusses perspective and the discipline of optics, an aspect not much investigated in material datable to before 1400; and it covers the transference of craft practice through technological treatises, medical and recipe collections as well as model books. This evidence informs the technical and stylistic analyses undertaken in the 122 manuscripts earmarked for individual discussion, some (for example, Cat. 28) hitherto little studied. The manuscript entries follow the precedent set by the multi-volume series Cambridge Illuminations, directed by Stella Panayotova, the curator of the ‘Colour’ exhibition for which this catalogue was compiled. As well as showcasing the richness and diversity of the Fitzwilliam Museum's collections – the majority of manuscripts forming the core of the catalogue are housed there – it features manuscripts from some of the Cambridge colleges and from the University Library. It is further enhanced by others from national collections. The majority are catalogued with an analysis of the identified pigments and artists’ techniques, some of which reveal surprising levels of complexity, many with implications for the wider field of manuscript studies.

For instance, more cross-media connections have been revealed than hitherto realised, with instances of the same pigments and techniques used by illuminators, easel and panel painters alike. Discovery of illuminators’ methods – not always detectable to the naked eye – have aided in a division of artistic hands, in linking one manuscript to another, and determining location of production. A case in point, unique to Venice and the Veneto, is a pigment obtained by grinding blue glass (‘smalt’) derived from the Murano glass workshops (for example, Cat. 81). Some colours were described in the medieval period as ‘alchemical’: alchemy had a well-established connection with natural philosophy and theology on the one hand and with apothecaries and medicine on the other, vermilion (red) being the definitive alchemical colour. One of the most remarkable works featured is the so-called Ripley Scroll (Cat. 25). Some twenty Ripley scrolls survive but Fitzwilliam Museum, ms 276* is the largest and finest in artistic execution. These scrolls summarise in allegorical poetry and imagery the stages in the Philosophers’ Stone, a red elixir – a supposed means of transforming metals. With reference to methods and techniques in manuscripts of different periods, the catalogue contains much valuable factual information on the origins and constituents of various colours. As in other spheres, colours were prone to fluctuation in fashion. Various techniques in manuscript painting are discussed: three different types of gold were used by illuminators: burnished (from gold leaf), mosaic and shell (so-named because it was stored in shells), the application of silver, the use of modelling (painting in light and dark tones) first seen in the depiction of clothing to give solidity to figures, antimony black (Cat. 75), grisaille (modelling in shades of grey) which may have been reserved for the French court circle associated with the fourteenth-century illuminator, Jean Pucelle, and semi-grisaille, a variant further developed by Willem Vrelant in the third quarter of the fifteenth century. It is of interest to learn that the early development of three-dimensional modelling and grisaille (c. 1260–1300) coincided with the various treatises circulating in Paris and Oxford. That the painting of flesh was equated with the act of incarnation and, in turn, with the humours is graphically illustrated by four full-length nude males (Cat. 80). The materiality of paint thus became the vehicle for bringing figures in pictures ‘to life’ and, indeed, to simulate death, one treatise on painting techniques recommending mixing blue to impart ‘a deathly pallor’, especially appropriate for depictions of the crucified Christ which should ‘arouse feelings of compassion on the part of the beholder’. As well as presenting an investigation of ‘colour’ in its multifarious aspects this catalogue covers issues of vandalism, censorship, forgery, reuse, restoration and conservation; ‘Grangerism’ – named after James Granger – was the habit of enriching books with illustrations extracted from other volumes. This touches on the question of the sale of manuscript fragments and single leaves, highlighting the deliberate destruction of books in the past. The Fitzwilliam Museum has acquired some very fine fragments from the Marlay bequest which feature prominently in this catalogue.

For those interested in the processes of illumination and the mythology of colour this impressive catalogue is indispensable. This publication is produced to a high standard in all respects, not least in its design and the quality of the colour reproductions which include some fine details and digital reconstructions. It represents an enormous amount of careful planning and the organisation of a large quantity of material (given its extensive range an index would have been helpful) into a scholarly and comprehensive body of knowledge and there is a useful glossary of terms and an appendix outlining analytical methods and equipment. All of this crystallises into a beautiful volume which is a joy to possess. Colour with its multiplicity of meanings was influential on virtually every discourse and discipline from natural history, to medicine, to theology, a resounding affirmation if one were needed for an exhibition of this nature which has drawn the attention of both the specialist and more casual observer to the extensive ramifications of colour. As signalled by Stella Panayotova in her guiding overview in the opening essay: ‘illuminated manuscripts remain witnesses to the diverse materials, skills, ingenuity and sophistication of medieval and Renaissance artists’. Indeed, they offer the largest resource in Western Europe for the study of colour. This innovative publication successfully challenges the misconception that manuscript illumination was a ‘quintessentially medieval static art form’. But it is an enterprise that has achieved much more besides.