Themes > Arts > Painting > Painting before 1300 > Early Medieval Painting > Romanesque Wall Painting and Books
 
Detail Pentecost, Cluny
Lectionary. Early 1100s Ink
and tempera on vellum Bibiotheque Nationale, Paris
During the Romanesque period wall painting (fresco) largely replaced mosaics (bottom page 279 and Vitale mosaics on page 281). The change occurred partly from the growing demand, due to the great number new churches being built, for artistsans skilled in the mosaic technique and also cost considerations, glass mosaics and the technique involved could be costly even in Medieval times. Unfortunately because of the fresco technique used, a kind of semi-wet technique, most have long since scrummed to the ravages of time.

Illustrated books would continue to play a key role in the transmission of artistic styles and cultural information from Detail Pentecost, Cluny Lectionary. Early 1100s Ink and tempera on vellum Bibiotheque Nationale, Paris one region to another. Like other arts, the output of books would increase dramatically in the 11th and 12th centuries. Monastic scriptoria continued to be the centers of production, where monks copied books in the monastic libraries.
  Medieval Scriptorium
In Europe in the Middle Ages before the invention of printing from movable type in the mid-1400s books were made by hand, one at a time with ink pen, brush and paint. Each was an important, time-consuming and expensive undertaking.

Medieval books were usually made by monks and nuns in a workshop called a scriptorium. Books were written on animal skin -- either vellum, which was fine and soft or parchment, which was heavy and shinier. (Paper did not come into common use until the early 1400s in Europe.) The skins were cleaned, stripped of hair and scraped to create a smooth surface which would absorb metallic inks and water-based paints. The Book of Kells (Early Medieval period) required the skins of more than 150 calves!

The Illuminated (illustrated) lectionary contained biblical excerpts arranged according to the Church calendar for reading during Mass. The page here contains the beginning of the eighth reading (lectio octava). The framed scene illustrates the beginning of the second chaprer of the Acts of the Apostles, which recounts how "tongues as of fire" from the Holy spirit descended on each of the apostles while the were assembled for Pentecost, and they began to speak "in tongues."

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