Medieval Art by François Thibault: An Afternoon in the Palace


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Available on the following products:


T-shirt

Mug

Tile coaster

Greeting card

Canvas bag

Poster

Infant shirt

A scene of nobles relaxing in the palace, with a floral border in the style common around 1500. The rich colors evoke the wealth and grace of medieval royalty.

Taken from a scroll which I worked on from October 2001 to June 2003 (I usually work much faster than that, but our twins were born in January 2002). The scroll is in the style of the Isabella Breviary, which was made for Queen Isabella of Castille, the first Queen of Spain, around 1497. The Isabella Breviary has many two-page spreads, where the left page has only a little text, but a whole lot of illumination (usually an elaborate scene plus wide borders filled with flowers and insects), and the right is mostly text, usually with fancy borders done in a fashion that complements the illumination on the left page. I find this a good layout to imitate for scrolls; I've used it twice now. For commercial products, of course, the text of the scroll would not be of interest to the buyer, so I took the left page and edited out the area containing the text blocks; this is the result.

Notes on the construction of the scroll

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