Miniature of the Adoration of the Magi
Master of the Dresden Prayerbook (active circa 1465 - 1515)
Date: 15th century
Place Made: Flanders
Materials & Techniques: Gouache on vellum
Dimensions: 10.8 x 7.3 cm
Accession Number: The Wallace Collection M318
Printable Version (opens in a new window)
This small painting was made about 500 years ago and once decorated a book called a manuscript. The book was hand written, rather than being printed, so this image was surrounded by beautiful handwriting.
The picture shows the Christian story of The Adoration of the Magi. The Magi were three wise men who visited Mary, Jesus and Joseph in a stable shortly after Jesus was born. They brought gifts of gold, frankincense and myrrh, which you can see if you look carefully. Around the main image is a border of leaves, flowers and insects and even a monkey wearing a backpack.
This picture is painted on vellum, the skin of a calf. It was a very expensive material used for fine books. The paint is made by mixing egg or animal gum and different colours in powder form. The colours came from natural plants and minerals. The gold is real gold in a 'leaf' (very thin) or a liquid form.
Teachers' Information
The picture was painted separately from the manuscript and then stuck in afterwards, however in many manuscripts the picture was painted directly onto the page. In both cases the book would have to be carefully planned, with the scribe leaving space for the images at the appropriate point in the text.
The painting would have once decorated a 'Book of Hours', a personal prayer book setting out prayers or recitations to be said at different points in the day. Images in Books of Hours would have illustrated the text and also acted as navigational tools to help people find their way around the book, in the days before page numbers. Because Books of Hours followed a pre-set format, they generally used images with the same subject-matter in order to illustrate the text. This meant that the greatest creativity could be had in the borders rather than in the main image. Borders often had foliage, flowers and insects, but here the artist has added a monkey wearing a backpack.
Nowadays the books we read are printed on paper using a printing press or digital computer file so they can be mass-produced. The process used to create the book this image once decorated would have been very lengthy, including preparing the calf skin with lime, scraping the fat and hair off, stretching it; cutting the skin to size with other pieces to make a small gathering of pages; measuring out the lines for text, spaces for decorated initials and illuminations; writing the text using specially prepared inks and quills; passing the text to the painter to add decoration and prepare the colours and the gold leaf; stitching all the gatherings together in order; binding the book and adding leather-covered wooden boards as a cover.
Activities
1. You could ask children to measure up their own page, allowing space for text, an image and perhaps a decorated initial to begin the text, combining maths, literacy and art and design. Remind children to be similarly creative when decorating their own versions, particularly the borders.
2. Bearing in mind the lengthy and complicated process for creating such a book, you could discuss with the children whether books in those days might have been more highly prized and expensive than today's equivalent, to guess how many books a scribe might have been able to write in a year and whether everyone would have been able to own such a book.