Gilding and painting an illuminated letter C in the International Gothic Style of the 15th Century
The next letter in my Illuminated Alphabet Project (check out my posts on the A and the B) is a C in the International Gothic Style. This style emerged out of regular-old Gothic in the 15th century and is marked by a greater sophistication and the particular elaboration of lavishly illuminated manuscripts made for private, wealthy patrons. The books created by the Limbourg brothers are often considered the pinnacle of this period of manuscript illumination. The brothers were Flemish artists and the principal masters of one of the most famous illuminated books of all time, the Tres Riches Heures du duc de Berry.
While there are many stunning books from this period, my eye is usually drawn to purely non-figural decorations (by that I mean, no people!) and, generally, the most famous manuscripts have lots of people in them. But I came across a Psalter (Ms.17) in the Getty collection that has almost no people in it and is, in my opinion, quite stunning. It was made in England by an unknown artist between 1420 and 1430. I have seen other manuscripts done in this particular English variation of International Gothic, but none this sophisticated or as beautiful.
In this alphabet project, my intention is not only to show various letters in various historical styles, but also to include corresponding borders. Sometimes, I need to design a pastiche, taking my border inspirtation from a different manuscript as my letter inspiration. That was not necessary in this case. The manuscript I used as my exemplar has beautiful examples of both. All I needed to do was pick and choose specific elements I wanted to include in my design.
I did, however, amend the color palette somewhat. The original Psalter does include some red/orange acanthus elements but, generally, the red appears most often combined with white. I decided I prefered the red and orange look. I was also a little more generous with my use of green.
Finally, I made a major detour away from the original but using a modern gilding size (glue) and three different tones of gold. Rather than use a historical size, I used an easily available product called Kolner Miniatum. The Miniatum is not quite as thick and gloopy as the Kolner Instacoll but, despite that, I still thin it down with some distilled water. I prefer to apply it in thinner layers than straight out of the bottle. It takes longer to apply since it's multiple laters, but I prefer the greater control this gives me, both for achieving crisp edges and how much raised effect I get. As for the golds, I used red gold in the letter itself, which is gold cut with a bit of copper. Frankly, I don't see a whole lot of difference with the regular gold so, once I finish up my current cache, I might switch suppliers and see if I can get something a little 'redder' looking. I then used moon gold (gold cut with a touch of palladium) in the 'box' of the border. This is a paler, slightly silvery gold, which I quite like. Unfortunately, I don't think it shows particularly well in the photos I took. Then, finally, I used regular 24k gold in the small fruits and diamonds in the rest of the border.
All in all, this letter took quite a long time to make, partly because it has a lot of elements and partly because I now have a full-time (and totally unrelated) job and just don't have as much time to dedicate to my illuminated letters. Now, for reasons I can't figure out, I can't put my time-lapse video in here. So, if you want to watch it, you can click here into my Instagram account where it's posted.
