Emeterius and Senior (c.July, 970). Colophon page, Commentaries on Apocalypse and Daniel by Beatus and Jerome [tempera on parchment]. Archivo Histόrico Nacional, Madrid.

A sensitivity to color and value pattern is shown from room-to-room, storie-to-storie. The façade of the building is cut away at a right angle to reveal the activity in the interior spaces. A watch tower with working spaces is the structure’s purpose. Clearly, describing the routine of the inhabitants was of greater importance than developing a sense of space. |

Like many works of the middle ages, this one finds itself nearly splitting the difference between optical reality and abstraction. In my opinion, while traces of realism are present in the depiction of the people, the cut-away nature of this work in combination with its reliance on patterns and nearly geometric shapes favor abstraction. In fact, some of the figures effectively melt into the background designs. A primary purpose of this illustration is to visually document Emeterius’ effort in the labor of book crafting.

Local value/shape patterns combine to create the larger, single pattern/shape of the building that defines this work. Combined with the cloth-like texture of the medium, it is affected with a warm, almost quilt-like quality. Midtoned orangish-reds are set up in opposition to dense blues, perhaps a result of the age of this work damaging a more deliberate color strategy. The arrangement of forms is highly decorative; both figurative and architectural elements conform to the page surface.

This work is asymmetric, but strictly resulting from formal arrangements and not due to unbalanced movement or energy. Movement is generally at perpendicular angles across the page, causing the handful of oblique angles to be more noticeable. An overall use of patterned small blocks is contrasted well against vertical and predictably-paced larger forms, though those shapes differ greatly in value.

Contrasts in positive and negative space create a top-down movement of the eye along the patterned tower. This overpowers the recognizability of the two figures in an adjoining room because of its diluted values. In it’s time, surely the cell containing this book’s crafters would have been the center of focus, in part because the descriptive text above their heads would have been more noticeable. The building itself has the nearest façade removed to provide the most information about its daily activities possible.

A colophon is the final page of a manuscript illuminary crafters use to identify themselves. In this example, the structure is the Tábara monastery of León, Spain and the two authors are the figures to the right of the bell tower. A sensitivity to providing detail that would not be possible if literal reality were the goal is present, generating the need for this work’s abstract nature. While some choices in composition are awkward to modern tastes, in some ways this work is centuries ahead of its time: A form of what would become the modern  grid system is present in how the patterns and are organized aligned.