Marquette Bible, vol. 1

From the Getty Museum record

Monks or nuns likely read from this large Bible during mealtimes in the refectory of a monastery. Written and illuminated around 1270 by a team of lay artisans from the active commercial centers along the French-Flemish border, the surviving portions indicate that at least six different artists worked on the initials, though scholars believe the original team responsible for the seven-volume Bible was even larger. The manuscript's size allowed the assembled monks or nuns to see and appreciate its decorative details from a distance. Historiated initials, common in thirteenth-century Bibles, appear at the beginning of each biblical book, with a few decorative vignettes in the margins. The burnished gold backgrounds, dragon motifs, and vine-like tendrils are characteristic of northern French Gothic illumination. In the 1400s, the Bible was held by the Cistercian convent at Marquette in northeastern France. A later inscription notes that Philip, Duke of Burgundy, a key art patron in late medieval France and Flanders, gave the manuscript to the nuns.