"Stephen J. Harris" <[log in to unmask]> wrote:
>It really doesn't look to me like a stream, since I don't see stylized waves,
curious, *i* do.
quite wonderfully and subtly rendered, i'd say.
>and the dark line that might be construed as a shoreline seems to curve
anomalously around the outline of the majuscule.
not really: the shadow of it at the back is considerably heavier and more
modulated (shadowed, if you like) than the simple line around the letter.
>Also, the color of the "water" (even if the pigment has degraded) is
reproduced on an acanthus leaf in the right margin and on petals as well. Your
proposal represents "water" with the same color as the foliage,
which to me seems unlikely.
i'd say that the fellow had a relatively limited palette to work with and made
pretty good use of what he had, this lovely earthy green esp.
you're tring too hard.
>Finally, the illumination looks unfinished to me.
"unfinished"?
artistically licenced, perhaps.
nothing unfinished about it --the scene "flows" into the text in a very
accomplished fashion.
i'm trying to find the other illuminations from the same mss which j michael
referred to, but without much sucess.
an url would help.
my guess is that, while there *may* be one or two which actually *are*
unfinished (not a particularly rare event in mss, though not at all a common
one, either), they will be unambiguously so; e.g., they will be incomplete at,
say the filling in stage, while the composition will totally laid out in
pencil or inked in or partially painted. such is not the case here: the whole
thing is finished in all its stages.
and, if the fellow had wished to realise a "complete" scene depicting st benny
with both feet firmly set terra firma he could have simply made the whole
composition smaller to fit the space, for example.
c?
>Given the relatively realistic proportions of the body and the lack of
anything visible below the knee, I'd be cautious with a claim that he is
standing in water.
questions of naturalism (a.k.a. "realism") aside, im not sure that he is
"holding up" his outer garment specifically to keep it out of the water
--seems like a common enough pose, for the period, the viewing of Sacred
Underwear being a favorite passtime, en ces temps la.
as a last resort, perhaps we should consider that the Text might have
something to do with the illumination; but that's for the less
palaeographically and latiniacally challened than i.
"...quippe moribus transies[?] nulli animum [man, no *wonder* they invented
dots for i's] uoluptati dedit."
reminds me of the stories about the Early Irish saints standing in icy streams
while they read (or recited) the whole of the Book of Psalms.
kinky.
best to all from here,
christopher
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