Recreation of the Piece
It is this page dedicated to St. Avia that I chose to recreate, as I feel that it provides the best lens through which to study this particular manuscript’s owner, and medieval female spirituality in general. For the most part, I chose to recreate the page as close to the original as possible, though I did focus on and emphasize some details that provide insights on the owner and her spirituality.
I chose to depict the saint with an open book in order to highlight the owner’s likely literacy and devotion to prayer and the word of God. Open books represented a call to prayer, thus the iconography heavily indicates the value of words to devotion, and the implied literacy it entails.
One of the other aspects of the illumination that I found intriguing and chose to highlight in the work is the secular decretive elements such as vines and flowers that also were intended to convey religious themes. The jeweled border was a significant element for medieval visual worship. The method of framing devine objects with heavily gilded natural forms was popular with upper class, wealthy patrons, for both aesthetic reasons and because of the association of gems and gold with the wonders of the divine, in a same manner as the Cluniac tradition of gothic architecture (8). For these reasons, I decided to emphasize and embellish the page’s margin in a style that reflected the visual tradition of mid-15th century French books of hours, incorporating elements from elsewhere in the manuscript and increasing the amount of gold and decoration.
Books of hours created for female use embody a medieval women’s intimate engagement with religious practices and observances, formerly an area of life dominated by clerical men.
8. Manion “Women, Art, and Devotion”, pg. 6