Liber colorum secundum magistrum Bernardum explained

The Liber colorum secundum magistrum Bernardum ('Book of Colours according to master Bernard') is a medieval treatise on miniature painting and book illumination. Written in a Medieval Latin interspersed with several expressions in the Italian Lombard dialect it stems from 13th century Northern Italy. The eponymous magister Bernardus (or 'master Bernard') was most likely a cleric working in a scriptorium to whom later collections also attribute further artisanal instructions not related to book painting. It is contained within four manuscripts:[1]

Content

The original corpus ascribed to 'master Bernard' himself amounts to 56 recipes. These treat:

Editions and translations

The Liber colorum was first published, based on three manuscripts, with a translation into Italian and a commentary by the Milanese conservationist Paola Travaglio in 2008, followed by a 2016 re-edition after the discovery of a fourth textual witness. 2023 Travaglio and Thomas Reiser published a German version with an expanded commentary.

Notes and References

  1. Cf. Travaglio 2008, pp. 2-5, 13-17; Travaglio 2016, pp. 149-153, 164-167; Travaglio/Reiser 2023, pp. 7-11.
  2. Cf. Travaglio/Reiser 2023. p. 34f.
  3. Cf. Mary Virginia Orna, Manfred J. D. Low, Maureen M. Julian, Synthetic Blue Pigments, Ninth to Sixteenth Centuries, II. ‘Silver Blue’, in: Studies in Conservation 30/4 (1985), pp. 155-160; ad loc. Travaglio 2016, p. 161; Travaglio/Reiser 2023, p. 40.
  4. Cf. Travaglio 2016, pp. 179 and 185; Travaglio/Reiser 2023. p. 43; section 172 in most editions of Cennini.