“Openings”
Jeffrey Hamburger, Harvard University, History of Art and Architecture
In an age of mechanical, and now virtual, reproduction, we have perhaps lost sight of the basic visual unit that structures our experience of the medieval book: the opening. From the origins of codex as a medium in late antiquity, and in contrast to the scrolls used in the ancient world, the confrontation of the verso and recto provided the visual field within which scribes and illuminators operated. Openings also made possible the visible elaboration of the word with figurated initials, frames and full-page miniatures. Jeffrey Hamburger will explore the complex semantics and literally revelatory possibilities of this new medium as it developed over the medieval millennium.
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