YEARBOOK OF THE ALAMIRE FOUNDATION

VIRTUS SCRIPTORIS: STEPS TOWARDS A TYPOLOGY
OF ILLUSTRATION BORROWING IN MUSIC THEORY TREATISES
OF THE LATE MIDDLE AGES AND THE RENAISSANCE
Luminita Florea
Robbins Collection of Roman and Canon Law,
University of California at Berkeley
This article proposes a preliminary typology of illustrations of musical concepts in
medieval and Renaissance music theory treatises, and posits that such illustrations
were frequently borrowed from other disciplines and adapted to the need of clarifying
these concepts. Thus astronomy lent its diagrams of concentric or intersecting circles
representing the then known universe, and its tables for the calculation of lunar and
solar motions; astrology – its zodiacal diagrams; canon law – the arbors, hands, and
ladders of affinity and consanguinity; heraldry – its shields and triangles; architecture
– its building frames; and so on. Conversely and quite often, other disciplines
borrowed concepts from music theory, which in turn allowed copyists and illuminators
to borrow and adapt the corresponding illustrations; marginal notes or commentaries
in medieval manuscripts include, at times, graphic metaphors and wordplays
related to music – such as using a noteshape as a substitute for the word nota in nota
bene.
Over the past thirty years the field of musical iconography has benefited from
large-scale studies such as Tilman Seebass’s work on Psalter illustration 1 and Howard
Mayer Brown’s series on Trecento musical imagery. 2 Within the last five years the
mounting of virtual exhibits of medieval and Renaissance manuscripts has become
common practice with academic and public libraries. Selected images or complete
manuscripts – some of which are relevant to this article – have been made accessible
through digitization at Oxford University, 3 the Université de Liège, 4 the Bibliothèque
Nationale in Paris, 5 and others. In addition, searchable databases of illustrations
from medieval manuscripts have been created at the Koninklijke Bibliotheek in
1 T. SEEBASS, Musikdarstellung und Psalterillustration im frühen Mittelalter. Studien, ausgehend von
einer Ikonologie der Handschrift Paris, Bibliothèque nationale, fonds latin 1118, Bern, 1973.
2 H.M. BROWN, Catalogus: A Corpus of Trecento Pictures with Musical Subject Matter, in Imago
musicae, 1 (1984), pp. 189–243; 2 (1985), pp. 179–281; 3 (1986), pp. 103–187; 5 (1988), pp. 167–243.
3 See Early Manuscripts at Oxford University: Digital Facsimiles of Complete Manuscripts, Scanned
Directly from the Originals (henceforth: Early Manuscripts at Oxford), .
4 See Choix de miniatures des manuscrits de l’Université de Liège (henceforth: Université de Liège,
Miniatures), .
5 See Expositions virtuelles, (henceforth: Paris, Expositions virtuelles), , especially Naissance de la culture française, Le roi Charles V et son temps, and Le
Ciel et la Terre, all mounted in and before 1988.
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