‘It has been said that Cambridge contains the greatest concentration of illuminated manuscripts anywhere in the world, the Vatican excepted.’ So began the foreword, by Peter Fox and Duncan Robinson, to the catalogue of The Cambridge Illuminations exhibition, held in 2005 at the Fitzwilliam Museum in Cambridge. The exhibition was to be ‘but part of a series of current projects to update radically the existing catalogues of illuminated manuscripts in Cambridge’ (Binski Reference Binski2005, 13). The catalogue of that exhibition focused on approaches to the history of manuscripts, including articles on the collectors (Christopher de Hamel), the Bible (Teresa Webber) and manuscripts and documents for the University of Cambridge (Nigel Morgan and Nicholas Rogers). The essay ‘Making an Illuminated Manuscript’ by Stella Panayotova and Teresa Webber introduced technical questions that were to become central to the follow-up exhibition, Colour, the subject of this review.

Colour: the art and science of illuminated manuscripts leads the reader through a different kind of enquiry to understand the manuscripts chosen for the Fitzwilliam’s latest exhibition, which attracted thousands of visitors between 30 July 2016 and 2 January 2017. Celebrating the museum’s bicentenary, the focus on illuminated manuscripts reflected their importance to the museum’s founder, Viscount Fitzwilliam. Most of the manuscripts exhibited and catalogued were drawn from the Fitzwilliam’s own collections, and the catalogue here reviewed was again authored by Stella Panayotova, this time with Deidre Jackson and Paola Ricciardi. This substantial and beautifully illustrated catalogue develops the themes of the exhibition through valuable introductory essays to its fourteen sections, together with extensive catalogue entries for each of the 122 manuscripts exhibited, in each case presenting a technical description of the manuscript as well as its art historical significance.

The exhibition celebrated ‘the world-class expertise of the Fitzwilliam’s curators and conservators’ (Tim Knox, p 8), an expertise at the heart of the ongoing MINIARE research project, investigating non-invasive analysis of illuminators’ materials to inform their conservation (http://www.fitzmuseum.cam.ac.uk/research/miniare). Using ‘advanced methods in the physical sciences, arts, humanities and social sciences to examine artists’ materials and techniques in illuminated manuscripts’, this ambitious project supports ‘collaborations between three types of experts, receptive to each other’s interests and methodologies’: manuscript scholars, curators and art historians, together with scientists and with conservators (Panayotova, p 16). This collaboration is at the heart of the investigation, and resulted in various new insights and technical discoveries. Stella Panayotova, also the curator of the exhibition, and leader of both MINIARE and the Cambridge Illuminations projects, credits the remarkable survival of colour in illuminated manuscripts for offering ‘the largest resource for the study of colour in Western Europe from the sixth to the sixteenth century’ (p 16). The project revealed the complexity of the colours used, contradicting ‘pervasive myths’ about the limited availability of pigments (see also Bucklow, pp 59–65), greater understanding of the significance of binding media, and the adaptation of artists’ techniques to create particular effects through the use of colour, including the specification of luminosity and intensity, not simply hue. Importantly, Panayotova challenges the long-held idea that in the Middle Ages ‘materials were valued over execution’, a myth reinforced by the anonymity of so many of these manuscript artists (pp 21–2).

Execution and the application of technique, often revealed through the science at the heart of the project, are meticulously observed. Throughout the catalogue, whether discussing the application of gold (Morgan, pp 192–9) or modelling (Morgan, pp 220–8) or the painting of flesh (Turner, pp 270–9), the authors focus on the skilful techniques used in harmony with the qualities of materials used. And the catalogue ends, as the exhibition did, with ‘Colour and Meaning’. Deirdre Jackson’s essay draws together the part colour plays in developing signification and interpretation, her evidence drawn from the art, the wider culture and experience, and the role of changing taste and fashion. To select just one of the many potent examples set out in this section: the significance of colour to the science of heraldry is reflected in a book of hours where the owners, kneeling in prayer, wear their arms as a form of identification, as Jackson concludes, ‘colour reinforced people’s perceptions of self within society and also expressed their most cherished beliefs’ (Jackson, pp 345–53).

This remarkable catalogue, beautifully produced in high-quality colour throughout, proves its point again and again. For manuscript scholars, curators and scientists, as well as all interested viewers, this multi-faceted project changes the nature of the observation of colour in illuminated manuscripts. Nothing can any more be taken for granted: not material, not technique, not skill, not meaning. Colour (and its absence – see Morgan, pp 246–50; Moodey, pp 251–5) takes a central place in the investigation of illumination and provides new understandings of its significance in manuscript illumination and in the art and culture of the Middle Ages.