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Paris, Bibliotheque Nationale De France, Codex Grec 54: Modus Operandi Of Scribes And Artists In A Palaiologan Gospel Book, Kathleen Maxwell

Art and Art History

Much can be learned about the working methods of scribes and artists when they leave their product unfinished. This is true of the late thirteenth-century illustrated Gospel book, Paris, Bibliothe`que Nationale de France, cod. gr. 54. It was intended to be a deluxe, bilingual (Greek and Latin) manuscript featuring full-page evangelist portraits and an extensive narrative cycle of some fifty-two miniatures. In the end, only about half of its Latin text and twenty-two narrative miniatures were actually completed. Five other miniatures remain unfinished, and space was reserved in the text for twenty-five additional miniatures that were never even begun. No …