9th century "Lady and the Unicorn" after the Bern Physiologus

IIn the National library in Bern, Switzerland, is found a treasure of a manuscript known as the Bern Physiologus. It is a 9th century book with a lot of illustrations of animals with the intent of portraying certain characteristics of these creatures in an allegorical sense. My primary fascination with this work is that it shows a still very real and strong connection to the Roman Empire in the second quarter of the 9th century. We often hear and read of the "fall of the Roman Empire" but in the 9th century, someone forgot to give that memo to those in control of the Carolingian Dynasty, and they saw themselves as the very real and unbroken continuators of said Empire. As such, many of the artists and architects continued on with their own versions of "late Antique" styles, including the illustrator of this Bern Physiologus. 

In progress view of my version of this painting.

The hand of this particular illustrator can be seen in several other surviving works from the period as well. Later manuscripts show that this particular "school" (a modern Art History word to denote a recognisable style produced by a groupe of artist over a period of decades.) of painting lasted well into the last quarter of the century, showing that whoever this original artist was, he must have been very well known and respected in his day and made a lasting impression on the field of art in the Carolingian world. From his work, one can see that he very much admired, respected, and above all, still had a lot of actual Roman art from which to draw inspiration from, at his disposal. 

The original Lady and the Unicorn from the Bern Physiologus
Some details have been obliterated from centuries of wear

An illustration from the Virgilus Vaticanus
At the time of the Bern Physiologus this would already
have been about 400 years old but the influence of this style
on the 9th century work is instantly recognisable.

I have already produced a couple works based on this manuscript and have posted them on this blog. Recently, I felt compelled to do another. As is typical of myself, however, I did not make a direct copy; just as every medieval artist took inspiration from something that he saw, and made it his own, I also put my own interpretations and subtle changes into what I produced. In this case, I particularly made changes to the "virgin". The original illustration is about 40 per cent smaller than my panel, so it was proper, in my mind, to give more detail to the woman's face and clothing, a possibility which the scale allowed for. I thus chose, as my model, another 9th century illumination for the source of inspiration of a new and more detailed face. 

Two other works that were also inspired from the same manuscript,
The first one, I cropped part of the image, the original had 
another bird and tree. The second one, I added the background
as the original just had the figure on a blank page.

For the painting itself, I went again to my egg tempera recipe, a painting medium and technique that I am really learning to love and enjoy working with. I also prepared a panel as per the ancient treatises on the proper methods of painting and made a panel of wood with many layers of gesso applied and then scraped down to a smooth satin feeling surface. I then used a silver stylus to draw in the design. After that, the actual painting began. I was so engrossed in the work that it was nearly half finished before taking any more pictures of it.

The lady on the far lower left was my source
for the face and garment

Gesso panel prepared and the design sketched in
(rather hard to see as silver point is not very dark)

This was how far I had gotten before I thought of taking 
another picture. The pencil was placed for scale

The completed painting

One thing that I noticed, after finishing the painting is that her arm looks very long. I compared it to the original, and the proportion is right, but because her shawl is draped different, it is not as noticeable in the original.

I really enjoyed creating this and hope you have also enjoyed seeing it. I am sure I will be doing more paintings from this manuscript in future. This is an extremely rare glimpse at non-biblical medieval illustrations, and because of that, I find additional fascination with it.

Should you be interested, I produce artworks, boxes, chests and other objects inspired by my years of research into the decorative styles of the early and high Middle Ages. Feel free to contact me if you would like to know more or to have something personal commissioned. 

12th Century Style Painted Dragon

Last Autumn I got a commission to do a painting of a dragon; the what and how of it was entirely up to me. Since I love medieval things, I naturally went in that direction. Several years before, I had come across an illuminated letter in Amiens BM142 an illuminated Manuscript in the Amiens library. This is a "lectionary" produced in Corbie Abbey around 1150 which is full of fun animals in vegetal swirls. All of the decorations which are called "illuminated initials" (first letters of words drawn with pictures or other decorations) are fantastic, but I was drawn to this dragon, especially. At the time I first saw it, I worked out a sketch, taking it from a roughly square format to a vertical one and eliminating its use as a letter, totally focusing on the dragon as a stand alone artwork. 

Detail from the 12th century style dragon
painted with hand-made traditional egg tempera

When I got the commission, I instantly knew that I already had my planning stage nearly finished. so I transferred it onto some watercolour paper and did a bit more fine tuning of the design. At this stage I had to think about how I would paint it. When I initially drew it eight years ago, I had thought I would paint it in the same manner as the original, but as a commissioned work it needed more colour and substance.

Amiens, BM MS 0142; the inspirational source

Drawn out and ready with the
 illuminator's bole

Applying the bole
(Still taken from a video)

After application of the bole

A lot of medieval painting and artwork from the 10th into the14th centuries utilised a gilded background as the basis for the painting. That seemed like a perfect starting point for this work as well, so I began by making up some traditional illuminator's bole ("bole" is the substance that the gold is stuck to in gilding work) from a mixture of yellow clay, animal glue, egg white, and honey. This I applied to the proper areas and then applied the gold. With this type of bole, one moistens the surface by breathing on it and then immediately pressing the gold into the freshly dampened area. One must go over it two or three times in this manner to get complete and deep coverage of the gilding.

23.5 karat gold leaf applied to the bole

Once the gilding has been done, the painting starts. To make the paint, one takes mineral powders of a desired colour and puts them on a heavy flat stone, adds a bit of water and then with a muller, begins to grind the pigment into a smooth paste. The grinding finished, the artist scoops up the mixture and adds it to an equal portion of egg yolk that has been mixed with water. This is the binder which turns what is essentially "coloured mud" into paint. For this style of art, each colour is painted on one at a time and there is no "blending" or mixing of colours. Any shading that occurs is done by lightening the saturation of pigment or over-painting with a lighter or darker colour.

The first two colours

The method of grinding the paint and the egg
used for the binder seen in a small jar

Rather like a "paint by number" the picture
slowly comes to life

The painting process went on nicely and I really enjoy painting with this medium. It almost transports one back in time working in this method. For even more "authenticity" I opt to use clam shells for my paint cups. Something that I have seen in a couple of 14th century illustrations. It is fun to see the painting "come to life" one colour at a time.

Nearing completion, but there is a flaw...

Even though I decided not to paint in the same manner as the original, which is actually painted with coloured inks as opposed to egg tempera, I did draw heavily from the colour arrangement that the original artist used. Two new colours, blue and a purple were added, but I still got in trouble when it came to not having two of the same colour beside each other. Because the original artist was using ink, and thus left a lot of white parchment show through, he was able to make a line on one side of a shape in one colour, but the opposite side of the same shape was done with a contrasting colour, thus ensuring that no two colours bordered each other. Painting in solid form, however, soon produced a "choke point" where the intertwining tail came back on itself, causing the green to encounter more green. I first tried to solve this by lightening the edge of the larger section of the tail, but this did not look authentic and I was not happy with it. 

The good thing is that freshly painted tempera can be easily scraped off and one has a chance to have another go at it. Incidentally, medieval scribes are almost always depicted with a feather (their pen) and a knife. The knife is both for sharpening the pen and as a "rubber" for removing mistakes or making corrections in the work. Turns out this is a very crucial piece of equipment.

After scraping and the beginning of some
colour changes

To keep the "flow" the orange of the body
was extended to the first break before
switching to the green of the tail

The funny thing is, once you decide that one area has to be changed, it affects other areas and soon you have a "snowball" effect going and lots of colour has to be removed and changed. Fortunately the avalanche was not huge and I found a stopping place for the scraping. Several areas had to have their colours re-done differently to maintain harmony and balance, but I think overall there was an improvement in the outcome.

At the same time, I also made another change to an area that had been vexing me, but until that point, I had not thought of how to fix it. I wanted the gold background to extend more on the righthand side, but there was no natural break in the design to conceal the transition. Every other place with the exception of one, in the entire picture has outlines for colour breaks. That one spot, between the blue and the green of the background in the final curl of the dragon's tail gave me the clue on how to do it, but it took me a while to realise how to adapt the idea elsewhere. The end solution was to have a serpentine line making the break between the green and the gold. (A keen observer will also note that I changed the colour of green for the background; this was because the original was too close to the green of the tail and did not provide enough contrast.)

 

The finished dragon

The final step, in keeping with the style of the medieval source material, was to add white highlights and then to outline all the major components in black. In all, this was an extremely fun and inspiring work and I thoroughly enjoyed my time doing it. The client was also extremely pleased with the outcome.

I am always accepting new commissions; feel free to reach out to initiate your very own special project. I may be contacted by phone, (number at the top in the banner) or through Instagram or WhatsApp. at Johann International.

Fine

Fabeltier

There is doubtless no definitive, universally accepted reason why, but since the beginning of time, man has been inventing fantastic, made up creatures. Forty some years ago I even once read a book that proffers the view that the dinosaurs were actually living experiments in crossbreeding by an antediluvian society, for the purpose of gladiatorial type sports. Probably a very far-fetched notion, but the point is, that somehow, humans (myself included) have always had a fascination with making up fantastic creatures, known in German, as Fabelwesen or Fabeltieren.('en' makes a noun plural in German)

Fabeltier

Some eleven or twelve odd years ago, looking through a book, I came across a drawing of an early medieval decorative motif for some metal object, in the form of an unidentified, (to me) rather contorted, creature in a roundel. I found it fascinating and wound up drawing him myself. That led to to the concept of creating a carved chest somewhat following after the manner of a small casket in the MET, which has a series of roundels with animals. With this idea in mind, I began making up additional creatures that might suit the purpose.

My dabblings with Fabelwesen. Somehow, they seem to fit more
appealingly in a roundel. They are numbered in the order in which they
were drawn over a couple of days. Number one is the one that started it all
and I believe number three was at least partially inspired by an historical
creation as well; the rest were figments of my own imagination.

The little casket from the MET which was the second part of the inspiration
for this project

That chest is yet to materialise, but in the autumn of the year of this initial conceptualisation, the organisers of a local event asked me to do some demonstrating. I decided to try carving one of my creatures, which I had recently finished drawing. In my wood-rack were several planks of pine left from a project, and as it was rather soft, seemed like a good wood to make the carving "easy". (As it turns out, carving pine is not particularly easy, - no forgiveness in grain direction and it is easily dented - oak would have been a much better candidate)

The carving progressed slowly over the course of the one day event, and by the end of day, his head and part of his body were defined inside a circular perimeter, his tail was also fairly well finished. After that day, however, he spent more than a decade in storage, almost completely forgotten.

Recently, in need of some material for a project, I was rummaging in the storage and happened upon this unfinished work. As I had been trying to think what meaningful gift I could give to my friend, Steffen, for his birthday, this suddenly presented itself as a good candidate. I got the carving out and took it back to my shop. It took me parts of four days to complete him because I completely re-carved every last millimetre in order to get the background much deeper than it had been. I "took a picture" of the piece as it was, but like many times before, there was no memory card in the camera, so no picture of how he was at that stage.

By the time I realised there was no memory card in the camera, the carving
was almost complete. The exposed dark colour is due to the 12+ years of
waiting in the storage building to be finished. Another plank of timber
 partially covered it, resulting in the lighter coloured upper half.

As I like to do with this blog, a bit of historical context to these imaginary creatures is warranted. I have no idea of the origin, and have not found any pre-medieval examples that show a very close connection, though there no doubt are such prototypes. The Gundestrup Cauldron shows on the "exterior plate A", two lion/dog looking creatures. Perhaps this is part of the tradition that eventually was codified by the early Middle Ages. The earliest versions that I know of, come from the 7th and 8th centuries. I do not profess or pretend to be an expert on the topic, however; the purpose of the following is simply to show some examples of the evolution of one branch of the Fabeltier through the course of the Middle Ages.

These characters, here shown in an 8th century iteration, will continue
in the ever changing styles throughout the course of the medieval period

It is hard to say what they are, or if they were actually, originally intended to be a real animal and, over time, became so stylised as to become Fabeltieren. Whatever the earliest intentions, by the 8th century they were already canonised as decorative repertoire for almost any ornamental purpose.

Amiens BM MS Lescalopier 030 fol 10v 4. V. 12jh Weissenau

In this late 12th century manuscript, from Weissenau Abbey, God is depicted creating the animals and fish on the fifth day of creation. (Latin; "Dies V") The interesting thing is that the "animals" portrayed are all mythical creatures. The "sea dog" and flying "sea lion" both have faces similar to our character.

Kölner Diözesan- und Dombibliothek MS Cod 83ii Fol 146r
798 (Detail)

Petrischrein, Domschatzkammer Minden
Carolingian Enamel plate re-used in an 11th century reliquary

Sometimes these creatures take on more of the characteristics we would ascribe to our notion of "dragons" such as those shown in the last example above, but often both these and dragons are shown together. Generally, the dragons will have thicker and often split tails, as well as wings, whilst the other, unnamed guys have neither of those.

Sometimes they take on more lion-like features, whilst other representations have them more dog-looking. My Fabeltier is a nice mixture of the two, which is also often found, as is exemplified in the following French miniature of the late 12th century. (middle left)

Getty MS Ludwig XIV 2 fol 126r um 1170-80 Umkreis Paris

These creatures seem to be prevalent throughout Europe, with slight regional artistic nuances, but generally recognisable as stemming from the same tradition, they can be found in all types of surviving artworks from as far apart as Spain and Norway.

Anglo-Saxon Stone Fragment from Jedburgh, Scotland, 9-10th cent.

North Italian or French Capital, now in the Louvre, 11th cent.

From a former frieze of Cluny Abbey, 12th cent.

Schaffhausen, Stadtbibliothek, Ministerialbibliothek Ms Min. 15 fol 45v
ca. 1100

One of my favourite characteristics of a sub-group of these creatures are those with a propensity to bite something (fruits, flowers, vines - see the Jedburgh stone carving above) or even their own backs or tails. In my opinion, they work best in a rounded fatter form, such as that shown in the Cluny fries-fragment above.

(A not very good picture of a detail from the) Basler Antipendium (altar)
now in the Musee de Moyen Age (Museum of the Middle Ages) in Paris
1st decade of the 11th cent., gifted to Basel Cathedral by Emperor Henry II 

In this roundel, the creature is biting his foot, which is another version of the biting theme. This is the sort of image I had in mind when designing my creatures for the box.

Taking advantage of some nice afternoon light to have a look
at the progress of my own carving

Once my animal was carved it was down to thinking about how to finish off the whole thing as a stand-alone piece of art. I took a cue from 12-13th century ivory mirrors and put "ears" (stylised leaves) on the four corners. In all, I think it worked out good. Once it was all done, I rubbed it down with some abrasive leaves and linseed oil, then I put it in the sun to give it a bit of a "tan" in an attempt to eliminate the piebald effect from a decade of being half buried and half exposed. I should mention that Steffen's Christmas gift to me aided my carving of his birthday gift; he gave me some very narrow carving chisels which worked great for getting into the gap between the border and the feet and rump. (1.5mm)

My Fabeltier - finished and delivered

Chipping Away

A year and three months ago (almost) I did a post on my theories concerning the making of a roof-shaped box or chest lid out of a solid log section. I had hardly had time to touch it after that until October, when I decided that I really wanted to get back into one of my medieval projects; it had been so long since I worked on any of them. (I have several underway thanks to my ADD - most of which have been featured at one or more points in this blog.) After finishing the painting of the moulding that I had been working on, I had almost a week before the installation was scheduled, so took advantage of the time to take up the lid project again.

The lid as it was in September of 2018

Once I got started on it again, it was easier to pick up a carving gouge and have a go at it at any moment I could spare, thus, about two weeks ago it was mostly finished. I have even begun the box itself, but that will also take quite a while, as it will be carved to the same level as the lid. Sadly, I did not have any more of the ash, so I will be making the box out of walnut.

Bellow are some pictures of the lid as it is at the present; two years after it got started.

Second end

Back side. This is a "textile pattern" made to represent woven cloth

Current view of the first end and front

The winter light is not very ideal for photographing anything, but that is what we have to deal with right now. Bears are much smarter than humans, they go to sleep and wait for spring.

Carving the back was somewhat amusing, because I chose a "simple" design. Many surviving 12th century boxes have simpler and/or textile designs either painted or carved on the back, and all of the early medieval boxes I know of, have simpler designs to their backs. Using that information and a lovely 7th century textile pattern, carved in stone and now found in the museum in Metz, I came up with a pattern for my lid. The amusing bit is that it may look simple, but the time to carve it was no less, and perhaps actually wound up being more, than the design on the front.

Inspiration for the rear of the lid

And as it turned out after carving

The designs for this project are taken from surviving 7th century Merovingian or Lombardisch stone carving. Some of the patterns are also echoed in metal and ivory-work of the same time period, which leads me to believe that had any wooden box survived from the same time period, it well could have had similar designs carved onto it, and thus my lid is a faithful reproduction of the possibilities of the time-period.

This lion was the main source
for my lions; adapted to the
carving style I am using

Additional designs and sources for border decorations/
All of my border designs were taken from 7th century sources

I had begun this side in December of 2017 and in September '18 when I posted
about it for the first time I had done some more. More than half , however, was
done this October. Even areas which had been "finished" were re-done because
the grounding (background area) was not deep enough. The darker areas
are still from my original efforts of two years ago.

European areas which had been occupied by Roman civilisation still retained many of the "classical" design elements in the 7th century. These styles were actually never completely eliminated and show up to more or lesser degrees until the Renaissance, when there was another deliberate attempt at wholesale imitate the art of classical Rome. (there had been at least two prior efforts at this, in the 9th and the end of the 10th/beginning of the 11th centuries) Most of the designs for this lid have some connection towards that Roman tradition, as did the stone reliefs from which I sourced the designs, however, as with a lot of my original source material, there were also "Migration People's" design elements interspersed. Such is the case with the "Flechtwerk" or woven band on the top of the lid.

Flechtwerk, "Woven-band" ornament on the flat top of the lid

As I said, the box itself has been started and here is a sneak-peek at one of the legs. Again, In Italy, France, and much of Eastern Germany, the 7th century still much more resembled Roman society than it resembled the arts architecture, culture, and styles of modern people's general conception of "medieval" Europe. (which is mostly that of the 13-15th centuries) Thus this leg is right in keeping with that fading classicism that would have prevailed in much of 7th century Europe.  

One of the legs, taken from a
7th century stone sarcophagus
found in France
(there are actually several
similar designs, not just a
single example)