Blackwell Reference Online

Extract

During the thirteenth century, Paris, the French capital, was one of the largest cities in Europe and, arguably, the center of European manuscript production. Home to a powerful court and to one of the preeminent universities in Europe, Paris was a market for a broad range of manuscripts, and thus was a leader and model for all of Europe. As a result of these particular circumstances, French manuscripts, particularly Parisian ones, have long been the focus of scholarly analysis and serve as an appropriate case-study for methodological approaches to Gothic manuscript illustration. This chapter will describe how some recent methodological approaches have built on fundamental studies of style to shape and reshape our perception of Gothic book production. It will track how the interest in codicology, genre studies, and interdisciplinarity have posed new questions about the production and consumption of the illuminated book. Stylistic analysis remains a central component of art historical practice and an essential foundation for other approaches to the book. Volumes by Vitzthum and Porcher established broad parameters for discussion of French style in the Gothic period to 1300, which subsequent scholars have refined and are just beginning to replace. In his posthumously published book, Robert Branner combined information drawn from diverse sources ranging from liturgical usage and ... log in or subscribe to read full text