October 2010, Issue 9
Dollhouse Tourism
Page 23
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Italy has long been considered the birthplace of Renaissance painting, overshadowing splendid artistic achievements in other areas, including manuscript illumination. Six cities and regions of Italy were significant centers for manuscript illumination: Bologna, Florence, Siena, Ferrara, Mantua and of course, Rome.
The first major European university was founded in Bologna in the Middle Ages. Consequently, the city became a leading center of manuscript production in the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries. In the 15th century, the small courts of northeastern Italy-particularly those at Ferrara and Mantua-became key centers of artistic innovation, partly under the influence of two artists from the region of the Veneto: Pisanello (c. 1395-1455) and Andrea Mantegna (c. 1431-1506).
In the sixteenth century Rome became a significant center of artistic patronage, where artists such as Raphael and Michelangelo undertook projects of great magnitude.
In the Middle Ages, books were mostly written and illuminated in monasteries and a familiar image associated with manuscript illumination is that of the monastic scribe bent over a desk deep in concentration and piously writing holy text onto parchment with a quill pen in a room lit only by a candle. Although this was not always the way manuscripts were produced, the abbey of Montecassino, flourished as a center of illumination in the 11th and 12th centuries.
The decline of the art of illuminated miniatures was made inevitable by the invention of the printing press, when wood-block prints began to replace painted illumination.
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