User:JacobR02/Inhabited initial
 | This is the sandbox page where you will draft your initial Wikipedia contribution.
If you're starting a new article, you can develop it here until it's ready to go live. If you're working on improvements to an existing article, copy only one section at a time of the article to this sandbox to work on, and be sure to use an edit summary linking to the article you copied from. Do not copy over the entire article. You can find additional instructions here. Remember to save your work regularly using the "Publish page" button. (It just means 'save'; it will still be in the sandbox.) You can add bold formatting to your additions to differentiate them from existing content. |
An inhabited initial is an initial, an enlarged letter at the beginning of a chapter, paragraph or other section of text that contains an illustration of human or animal figures within the letter[2]. Figures in inhabited initials may be related to the contexts of the text, but do not need to be. They may be purely decorative. They do not depict narratives[2], unlike the similar historiated initial, which depicts an identifiable scene or story[3]. These illustrated initials were first seen in the Insular art of the early 8th century, and were later characteristic of Romanesque illuminated manuscripts of the late 11th and 12 centuries[4]. Both are common in luxury illuminated manuscripts. The earliest known example is in the Saint Petersburg Bede, an Insular manuscript of 731-46, and the Vespasian Psalter has another[5].
The size and degree of decoration of an inhabited initial may further give clues to both its importance and location. Letters that began a new or particularly noteworthy section might receive more flourish and space. In luxury manuscripts an entire page might be devoted to an initial[6]; both the size and ostentatiousness of a manuscript reflect both on the status of the manuscript and on its owner[7].
References
[edit]- ^ "Inhabited Initial E (The J. Paul Getty Museum Collection)". The J. Paul Getty Museum Collection. Retrieved 2022-04-23.
- ^ a b Wight, C. "I - Glossary for the British Library Catalogue of Illuminated Manuscripts". www.bl.uk. Retrieved 2022-04-23.
- ^ Chilvers, Ian (2009). The Oxford Dictionary of Art and Artists. Oxford University Press. ISBN 978-0-19-860476-1.
- ^ "Inhabited Initial H (The J. Paul Getty Museum Collection)". The J. Paul Getty Museum Collection. Retrieved 2022-04-23.
- ^ Brown, Michelle (2007). Manuscripts from the Anglo-Saxon age. Toronto. ISBN 978-0-8020-9096-6. OCLC 148749193.
{{cite book}}: CS1 maint: location missing publisher (link) - ^ Clemens, Raymond (2007). Introduction to manuscript studies. Timothy Graham. Ithaca. ISBN 978-0-8014-3863-9. OCLC 122423508.
{{cite book}}: CS1 maint: location missing publisher (link) - ^ "Lighting the Way". www.europeana.eu. Retrieved 2022-04-23.