Initials and Line Fillers

Large initial T with blue fill, white line detailing and red highlights and illuminated surrounding square.

Stack of small initial S, with alternating blue and red color scheme surrounding the gold initials.

Large initial S from the folio containing the Marian prayer, which shows a different style of decoration than the other initials in the known folios of the manuscript.

Initials

Almost all of the initials in the known folios of Ege 47 follow a similar design. Large initials are done in blue and red with white line detailing, as well as some floral decoration in the middle, and the surrounding boxed-in space is filled either with gold ink or gold leaf (the quality of the pictures, unfortunately, makes it difficult to tell which). Smaller initials are done in gold leaf, and surrounded and filled with red and blue ink with white line details. Small initials for the most part alternate - one surrounded by red, then one by blue, except in the litanies where they are all stacked together. The large initials, in contrast, are all mainly blue, with red ink used for accents and in filling the floral designs.

While some of the initials are more angular than others, and the style of the box around them changes slightly from page to page, these differences can be accounted for in there being more than one artist using a similar style.

The only initial that is different from the others is the capital S found at the beginning of the Marian Prayer. This initial, unlike the other initials, while done in blue with white line details, lacks the floral elements of the other initials. It is surrounded with red instead of gold, with what appears to be gold line detailing on the red. It is very interesting that the artistic style of the initial from the most uncommon part of Ege 47 is also different from the style of the rest of the known folios of the manuscript.

Geometric line fillers (Hours of the Virgin, Matins)

Line fillers with vines (Hours of the Virgin, Matins)

Smaller, more frequent line fillers (Litanies).

Line Fillers

Ege FOL 47 contains three types of line fillers.  The most popular are red and blue bars with geometric white lines and illuminated gold circles. See, for example, the leaf from the Hours of the Virgin, Matins at left. These designs are representative of a shift to more abstract designs towards the end of the fifteenth century, as also evidenced in the manuscript’s frequent geometric borders discussed elsewhere in this exhibit.

Less frequently found among the extant pages, but still popular, are illuminated gold line fillers with red and blue vines and leaves.  Occasionally, the gold rectangles contain red and blue leaves without vines.  This second leaf at left, also from matins in the Hours of the Virgin, features line fillers without vines on the verso and with vines on the recto.  As mentioned above, these varied styles (not only in line fillers, but also in borders and initials) may indicate that multiple artists worked on the book's decoration.

Unsurprisingly, certain folios of the manuscript have no line fillers.  The content of some sections, however, requires more: in the litanies, for example, each line contains only the name of a saint.  On both sides of the third leaf at left, one also finds the smallest line filler used by the illustrators of Ege FOL 47: a single leaf or circle set against a gold background.