After Clas 2/10

CLASS 2/10

Today we did in-class presentations. We first talked about Spanish Illuminated Design. When the Moorish army defeated the Spanish, the civilization was basically one big prisoner of war under the Moorish. The Moorish began to develop manuscripts by mixing Islamic tradition with the Christian design. This was characterized by flat shapes with intense colors. There were many included animals and displays of apocalyptic scenes.

The Romanesque and Gothic styles were a little meshed together. The Romanesque style had a renewed religious feeling in which monasticism reached its peak. It gave a new emphasis on the linear design of script. The Gothic style emerged from advance towns developing into cities and money becoming a main source of wealth. The developed "textura", a very bold style of lettering. They added color blocks to the end of lines to take up space. The Gothic style was a big contrast from the typical rounded lettering we have seen before. It was also very abstract.

Judaic manuscripts evolved from the Jewish people be dispersed during the "Dispora". Because of this migration there is not a specifically defined style of manuscripts. They mostly focused on Jewish history, usually covering the Exodus from Egypt and Jewish celebrations such as Passover. They also contained Hebrew calligraphy.

The Islamic script is very beautiful and is most often found in the form of their holy book, the Koran. There are also typically no pictures as their religion holds the belief that only God is the creator. This is also an early form of cursive with all letters being connected with no beginning or end.

The Late Medieval period was dark. Manuscripts were popular for private use, specifically the Book of Hours which contained religious texts for every hour of the day. They also contained minature paintings. These were pretty little paintings that used atmospheric perspective. They were realistic and had a lot of depth. These paintings were used to create a calendar with pictures for each moth. There were many more paintings used than typography, but when script was used it was usually Textura from the Gothic style.

MOST MEANINGFUL: I believe the most meaningful bit of information this class period was the Celtic development of spaces between words. This makes reading very simple and obviously it translated today as well.

QUESTION: Anything about Judaism interests me. My question is what is Diaspora?