The idea of tourism is a relatively new one. In the medieval period, no one traveled for fun. In fact, most people never ventured further than twenty miles from their hometown. If they did, it was usually for one of five reasons—diplomacy, war, trade, pilgrimage or enslavement. These ventures, captured in illuminated manuscripts, are the subject of the Getty Center’s “Going Places: Travel in the Middle Ages,” on view through Nov. 30.
“Eyewitness accounts, hearsay and rumor, these sorts of things get combined with historical fiction. Accounts that are received from antiquity and repeated over and over again, then merge with eyewitness accounts and blend together in a mix of some fact informed by historical fiction, and elaborated for medieval imagination,” Getty’s associate curator of manuscripts, Larisa Grollemond, tells Observer. “If you did take a journey, pilgrimage would be it. Foot travel is by far the most common mode of transportation, foot travel, donkey and cart.”
Capturing this theme are The Translation of the Bodies of Aimo and Vermondo and The People of Milan Praying at the Altar Where Aimo and Vermondo are Buried, two illuminations attributed to Anovelo da Imbonate, circa 1400. Made from elements common to the medium—tempera, gold leaf and ink on parchment—the artwork’s Byzantine handling of perspective is evident in the positioning of the bodies of 7th-century saints, Aimo and Vermondo.
“We’ve been taught this narrative of artistic progress, which culminates in the Renaissance with an increased naturalism, which we think of as better or more sophisticated,” explains Grollemond. “Medieval artists are not often interested in naturalism; that’s not the point. They’re interested in decoration, ornamentation and emotional power of the images, and their ability to convey a particular kind of information. There are some things in the 12th and 13th Centuries that we would not consider naturalist or realist at all, but the technique is beautiful. It’s not doing the things that we expect of art, in some ways, but it is fulfilling a purpose that was very much part of the book culture and visual culture of the Middle Ages that we don’t necessarily share today.”
By the 15th Century, there was greater dialogue between Northern European and Italian artists, and it shows in works like Flemish artist Simon Bening’s 1550 miniature, Villagers on Their Way to Church, from a Book of Hours, a devotional volume for Christians. Jacques de Lalaing Taking His Leave from the Dauphin of France, from 1530, shows celebrity knight Jacques de Lalaing, famous for his prowess and tournament fighting in non-lethal competitions.
A new acquisition is a 13th-century manuscript devoted to Alexander the Great, including Alexander the Great with the Horse Bucephalus, a late 14th-century image of the king wearing aristocratic pointy shoes and holding the reins of the horse, which, according to prophecy, could only be tamed by he who would conquer the world. Alexander Adventuring Underwater depicts the legendary king in a giant jar, surrounded by fantastical animals as he explores the ocean depths.
Illuminated manuscripts are full of such beasts, like the dragons seen roaming the desert in China, from Book of the Marvels of the World. A common reference for the wild kingdom was The Bestiary, a compendium of creatures compiled throughout the Middle Ages. It mixed mythical creatures like the griffin with real-life animals like the lion, albeit a likeness not fully familiar to contemporary readers. Around the time of The Bestiary, Henry III of England received an elephant as a gift from France’s Louis IX, which might explain why it’s rendered more accurately than lions and deep-sea creatures.
“Misinterpretation becomes a baseline for later writers,” explains Grollemond. “People like Marco Polo go to India or China, and they see a rhinoceros and say, ‘I saw this thing with a horn and it has these metal plates, and it’s bumpy and weird-looking. I didn’t know unicorns would look like that.’”
Most manuscripts are bespoke books for the medieval one percent. Early practitioners tended to be monastic illuminators, but by the end of the Middle Ages, there were thriving book markets in many European cities and the emergence of professional scribes and artists—most of whom remained anonymous as it was not common practice to sign a manuscript. Professional binders and guilds dedicated to the manufacture of pigments, ink and other tools of trade were instrumental in expanding the practice.
It’s not easy tracing the legacy of illuminated manuscripts, but Grollemond senses the closest progeny might be art books. “There’s something intimate and seductive about the book as an object. You have a relationship with people through time when you handle books. I think there’s something really nice about that.”
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