Medieval People Part 16

Ess.e.x_, II, p. 382.

_Notes on Ill.u.s.trations_

PLATE I. _Bodo at his work_

From an eleventh-century Anglo-Saxon calendar in the British Museum (MS.

t.i.t., B.V., pt. I), showing the occupations of Bodo, or of his masters, for each month of the year. The months ill.u.s.trated are January (ploughing with oxen), March (breaking clods in a storm), August (reaping), and December (thres.h.i.+ng and winnowing). The other pictures represent February (pruning), April (Bodo's masters feasting), May (keeping sheep), June (mowing), July (woodcutting), September (Bodo's masters boar-hunting), October (Bodo's masters hawking), and November (making a bonfire).

PLATE II. _Embarkation of the Polos at Venice_

From the magnificent MS. of Marco Polo's book, written early in the fifteenth century and now preserved at the Bodleian Library, Oxford (MS.

no. 264, f. 218). The artist gives an admirable view of medieval Venice, with the Piazetta to the left, and the Polos embarking on a rowing boat to go on board their s.h.i.+p. In the foreground are depicted (after the medieval fas.h.i.+on of showing several scenes of a story in the same picture) some of the strange lands through which they pa.s.sed. Note the Venetian trading s.h.i.+ps.

PLATE III. _Part of a landscape roll by Chao Meng-fu_

This very beautiful scene is taken from a roll painted by Chao Meng-fu in 1309 in the style of w.a.n.g Wei, a poet and artist of the T'ang dynasty (A.D. 699-759). A fine description of it is given by Mr Laurence Binyon: 'In the British Museum collection is a long roll, over seventeen feet long, painted almost entirely in blues and greens on the usual warm brown silk.... It is one continuous landscape, in which the scenes melt into one another. Such rolls are not meant to be exhibited or looked at all at once, but enjoyed in small portions at a time, as the painting is slowly unrolled and the part already seen rolled up again. No small mastery is requisite, as may be imagined, to contrive that wherever the spectator pauses an harmonious composition is presented. One has the sensation, as the roll unfolds, of pa.s.sing through a delectable country.

In the foreground water winds, narrowing and expanding, among verdant knolls and lawns, joined here and there by little wooden bridges; and the water is fed by torrents that plunge down among pine-woods from crags of fantastic form, glowing with hues of lapis-lazuli and jade; under towering peaks are luxuriant valleys, groves with glimpses of scattered deer, walled parks, clumps of delicate bamboo, and the distant roofs of some nestling village. Here and there is a pavilion by the water in which poet or sage sits contemplating the beauty round him.

These happy and romantic scenes yield at last to promontory and reed-bed on the borders of a bay where a fisherman's boat is rocking on the swell. It is possible that a philosophic idea is intended to be suggested--the pa.s.sage of the soul through the pleasant delights of earth to the contemplation of the infinite.'--Laurence Binyon, _Painting in the Far East_ (1908), pp. 75-6. The section of the roll which has been chosen for reproduction here has already been reproduced in S.W.

Bush.e.l.l, _Chinese Art_ (1910), II, Fig. 127, where it is thus described: 'A lake with a terraced pavilion on an island towards which a visitor is being ferried in a boat, while fishermen are seen in another boat pulling in their draw-net; the distant mountains, the pine-clad hills in the foreground, the clump of willow opposite, and the line of reeds swaying in the wind along the bank of the water are delightfully rendered, and skilfully combined to make a characteristic picture.'--_Ibid_., II, p. 134. Other sections of the same roll are reproduced in H.A. Giles, _Introd. to the Hist, of Chinese Pictorial Art_ (2nd ed., 1918) facing p. 56; and in L. Binyon, _op. cit_., plate III (facing p. 66). It is exceedingly interesting to compare this landscape roll with the MS of Marco Polo, illuminated about a century later, from which the scene of the embarkation at Venice has been taken; the one is so obviously the work of a highly developed and the other of an almost nave and childish civilization.

PLATE IV. _Madame Eglentyne at home_

This is a page from a fine ma.n.u.script of _La Sainte Abbaye_, now in the British Museum (MS. Add. 39843, f. 6 vo). At the top of the picture a priest with two acolytes prepares the sacrament; behind them stands the abbess, holding her staff and a book, and accompanied by her chaplain and the sacristan, who rings the bell; behind them is a group of four nuns, including the cellaress with her keys, and nuns are seen at the windows of the dorter above. At the bottom is a procession of priest, acolytes and nuns in the choir; notice the big candles carried by the young nuns (perhaps novices) in front, and the notation of the music books.

PLATE V. _The Menagier's wife has a garden party_

This beautiful scene is taken from a fifteenth-century ma.n.u.script of the _Roman de la Rose_ (Harl. MS. 4425), which is one of the greatest treasures of the British Museum.

PLATE VI. _The Menagier's wife cooks his supper with the aid of his book_

From MS. Royal, 15 D. I, f. 18, in the British Museum which is part of a _pet.i.te bible historiale_, or biblical history, by Guyart des Moulins, expanded by the addition of certain books of the Bible, in French. It was made at Bruges by the order of Edward IV, King of England by one J.

du Ries and finished in 1470, so that it is about eighty years later than the Menagier's book. The ill.u.s.tration represents a scene from the story of Tobias; Tobit, sick and blind, is lying in bed, and his wife Anna is cooking by the fire, with the help of a book and a serving maid.

The right-hand half of the picture, which is not reproduced here, shows the outside of the house, with Tobias bringing in the angel Raphael. The illuminated border of the page from which this scene is taken contains the arms of Edward IV, with the garter and crown.

PLATE VII. _Calais about the time of Thomas Betson_

This plan of Calais in 1546 is reproduced from a 'Platt of the Lowe Countrye att Calleys, drawne in October, the 37th Hen. VIII, by Thomas Pettyt,' now in the British Museum. (Cott. MS. Aug. I, vol. II, no. 70).

There is only room to show the top corner of the plan, with the drawing of Calais itself, but the whole plan is charming, with its little villages and great s.h.i.+ps riding in the channel.

PLATE VIII. _Thomas Payc.o.c.ke's house at Coggeshall_

From a photograph of the front of the house, standing on the street.

Note the long carved b.r.e.a.s.t.summer that supports the overhanging upper story. On the left can be seen, much foreshortened, the archway and double doors of linen fold panels. The windows are renovations on the original design, flat sash windows having been put in in the eighteenth century.