MINIATURE. The term miniature would apply with equal propriety to every kind of painting executed on a minute or diminutive scale ; but as commonly employed it includes only two, though some what widely different, kinds of painting. One of these is that style of ornamental painting, or illuminating, which is seen in its greatest perfection on the vellum pages of medieval bibles, psalters, service books, and other costly manuscripts : the other kind is that of small portraits executed chiefly on ivory, to which indeed the term has in is popular acceptation been of late years almost exclusively confined.
Wo will notice first the former kind of miniatures. The practice of enriching manuscripts with small paintings is very ancient. Many of the Egyptian pagri exhibit in their coloured hieroglyphics what are in their way admirable examples of miniature painting. These are painted in very vivid colours, and often display much artistic skill in their execution. From the marvellous skill and patience shown by the Greeks iu the engraving of small figures on gems, we may conclude that they could paint with equal skill on a small scale, but wo do not know that they practised this kind of painting to any extent. Among the Romans, books were occasionally adorned with small paintings in a very costly style for noble and wealthy persons. Pliny (' Mist. Nat.' xxxv. 2.) relates that 31arcus Varro'is work entitled Hebdomades ' consisted of brief biographies of 700 illustrious men, from Homer downwards, each being accompanied by a portrait. There has been considerable discussion as to the manner in which these portraits were executed, some, and Muller amongst them, supposing that they were produced by a reproductive process—a sort of engraving and print ing in fact—which enabled them to be repeated in each copy of the work. It is more probable that they were drawings or paintings though perhaps not of a very elaborate description. Seneca, Martial, and other writers refer to the practice of adorning manuscripts with painted illustrations.
In the decline of art the practice was preserved by the artists of Byzantium. Some writers believe that in the existing Byzantine miniatures wo have in fact the connecting link between ancient and modern painting. But there is nothing in the character of these works to support the suggestion that the artists had inherited the traditions of the painters of ancient Greece. The earliest works were uncouth in drawing and barbarous in design, and owe both in general style and colour something to oriental taste. Yet they are of exceed ing value as indicative of the character of the earliest riawnings of the revival of art under Christian influence. And as long as the practice
continued of adorning manuscripts with these works they retain their value as documents in the history of art—representing on the whole faithfully its condition at the venous periods, and in its earlier stages being almost the only examples of painting that have come down to us. These illuminations are also of great value, apart from their worth as works of art, as illustrating the costume, weapons, and even the architecture of their time.
The oldest existing manuscripts with miniatures are Byzantine, and of the latter part of the 4th, or beginning of the 5th century. During the first centuries, pictorial representations were studiously discouraged by the bishops of the church ; but this was ;changed in the 4th century, and thenceforward we find the practice of illuminating manu scripts to have generally prevailed—the painters, being for the most part, monks, and a scriptorium, or establishment for writing and illumina ting manuscripts, being attached to almost every wealthy monastery. The earliest extant illuminated Byzantine manuscripts are a book of Genesis in the Imperial Library at Vienna ; one similar in subject and character, but fuller of miniatures, which formed one of the treasures of the Cottonian collection, but was unhappily almost destroyed by the fire at Ashburnham House ; and a Virgil in the Vatican. The Vienna manuscript has the text chiefly in gold and silver, and is adorned with 88 miniatures; the Vatican Virgil contains 50 miniatures, the text being written in capital letters and in black ink. The Vatican Virgil was engraved by 1'. S. Bartell (1677), at the expense of Cardinal C. Massimi, but the engraver corrected both the drawing and chiaroscuro, in accordance with the taste of his day, and the engravings are con sequently valueless for any historical or critical purpose. More accu rate outlines of them are given by D'Agincourt,`Mist. de l'Art par lea Monumens,' Feint. tab. 20-25. In the same work are given outline tracings of the miniatures of the best known manuscripts, which will enable the student to follow the fluctuating progress of the art in the hands of the Byzantine miniatori, to its greatest excellence about the 10th century, and thence trace its decline to the 13th century, and its temporary revival and termination, as far as Greece is concerned, in the 14th. Outline illustrations are also given in the same work of the miniatures of Italy, France, &c. A good notion of the style of colour of the diffenan schools of medkeval miniatori will bo obtained from the drawings by Owen Jones in the splendid work of Mr. II. N. Humphreys, The Illuminated Books of the Middle Ages ( fol., 1819).