10 - Graphic and Figural Representation in Touronian Gospel Illumination

Summary

In this essay, I consider the integration of the Maiestas image into gospel books from the ninth-century scriptorium at Tours, with a particular focus on the questions of ‘graphicacy’ at issue in this collection. I examine how the Maiestas – a powerful visual motif that is equally powerful as a theological concept – may be incorporated into a gospel programme through the play between textual, graphic and figural elements in a manuscript’s design. I will consider several specific cases in order to explore the following fundamental premises. Illumination may be broadly defined as an element of manuscript production that works to represent the contents and nature of a book. Drawing or painting provides a visual register in which to frame concepts thought to express the fusion between a text and its manuscript form. As such, the work of gospel-book illumination – broadly speaking – is to represent particular books in terms dependent on the nature of the gospel genre. Graphic and figural registers of decoration constitute discrete but interconnected visual systems of signification within a manuscript. Either or both may be marshalled to craft a programme of illumination that represents a particular book; and either or both may be implicated in the way an image type like the Maiestas is incorporated into the gospel genre. The way an image such as the Maiestas functions is likewise dependent on its context. The nature and argument of any one iteration of the type are defined through factors of medium, placement, and manuscript genre as much as through the specifics of composition.

I proceed from the further premise that the fundamental structure of the Maiestas composition – regardless of the particulars of any one image – is in itself recognizable and meaningful. This point is worth stating because it speaks directly to the core concept of this volume. Processes of production and reception intersect within the category of graphicacy, and the way I propose to discuss the Maiestas within gospel books involves negotiating issues that arise in both the construction and the interpretation of images. The volume as a whole is dedicated to the idea that the visual qualities of writing and decoration form avenues by which books may be made to communicate conceptual information.