Cambridge Illuminations

The Cambridge Illuminations (July-December 2005) has been judged to be not only the largest exhibition of illuminated manuscripts in a century (the second largest ever), but also one of the best displayed and most successful. It highlighted in an unprecedented way the ‘hidden’ and yet most characteristic treasures of Cambridge – its books and its academics.

Unlike other great manuscript repositories where the manuscripts are housed under the roof of a single institution, the Cambridge treasures are shared between numerous libraries. Collectively, the holdings of the University Library, the Fitzwilliam Museum, and the Colleges of Cambridge preserve the history of manuscript production over 10 centuries, from the 6th to the 16th, covering all major intellectual and artistic centres, and a wide range of texts in Latin and in the vernacular languages. The Colleges offered their treasures enthusiastically.

Cambridge is very rich in people, too. The Cambridge Illuminations was the creation of Cambridge’s leading medievalists. For three years, Paul Binski, Christopher de Hamel, Rosamond McKitterick, Nigel Morgan, Teresa Webber, and Patrick Zutshi met monthly to discuss every aspect of the catalogue and exhibition. Richard Beadle, Peter Jones, David McKitterick, Jayne Ringrose, and Nicholas Rogers lent their expertise generously, and so did colleagues from abroad, notably Jonathan Alexander and James Marrow, Honorary Keepers of Manuscripts at the Fitzwilliam Museum. Visitors to the exhibition owe them more than their names in the exhibition catalogue may suggest. It took a great deal of thinking, talking and writing. It took a lot of coffee and biscuits. There were trying moments, but there was fun, too, especially when discussing titles for the exhibition, for instance, Monks and Monkeys.

With over 200 exhibits, 17 lenders and two venues, the Fitzwilliam Museum and the University Library, the Cambridge Illuminations was every bit as complex as any big loan exhibition, although no manuscript travelled more than 10 minutes down the road. Each manuscript had to be insured to the owner’s satisfaction. The total figure for the insurance was staggering. Individual manuscripts were insured for the equivalent of several Mones or Picassos. Each manuscript had to be photographed and displayed without compromising the requirements of lenders and conservators. Bespoke cradles were measured and cut to size and shape to accommodate stiff bindings and temperamental parchment. There were sponsors to cultivate, various audiences to engage and the media to provide with information at the right moment and the right pitch. BBC 4 devoted a thirty-minute programme exclusively to the Cambridge Illuminations, which continues to be aired long after the exhibition has come down.

And then, there was the Macclesfield Psalter. It had rested on the shelves at Shirburn Castle for centuries, completely unknown until the Library of the Earls of Macclesfield began to be dispersed at auction in 2004. The new find went under the hammer in June 2004 and was bought by the Getty Museum in Los Angeles. But the Arts Minister placed a temporary export bar on the manuscript and the Fitzwilliam Museum launched a major campaign to raise the necessary Ł1.5 million. The support of the public was truly astounding. The Psalter arrived at the Museum in February 2005 and was displayed immediately, for two weeks. Over 6,000 people stood in line for hours to see it. The Queen came to see it, too, though she didn’t have to queue.

Made in East Anglia in the 1330s, the Macclesfield Psalter is the unsuspected member of a well-known group of manuscripts characterised by a bright colour-scheme, bold forms and eclectic iconography. It shows a voracious appetite for bawdy humour, social satire, the scatological, and the obscene. Its margins teem with charming glimpses of every-day life and whimsical creations of the wildest imagination. But it also reveals a highly sophisticated taste for classicising motifs, exquisite rendering of the human body, portraiture of unprecedented psychological depth, and a pronounced interest in human emotions and the virtuoso depiction of their extremes. It presents rich material for doctoral dissertations.

The Macclesfield Psalter also presents a considerable challenge to conservators. It arrived at the Fitzwilliam Museum in three parts, with its leaves trimmed down to fit on a shelf, its eighteenth-century binding broken, and its quires stab-stitched - a nasty piece of early modern conservation. The Museum’s parchment conservator worked miracles and the manuscript was displayed for the full run of the Cambridge Illuminations, in a gallery of its own and not in the usual single opening, but in over 60 pages. A thorough pigment analysis was carried out by conservators from the Hamilton Kerr Institute and an international team of scientists. A complete and affordable facsimile with a commentary will be published by Thames&Hudson in 2008.

The Cambridge Illuminations Conference (8-10 December 2005) organised with assistance from the Centre for Research in the Arts, Social Sciences and Humanities, was fully booked (150 people) a month before the registration deadline. With over 100 people on a waiting list, we had to re-open registration and relocate to a larger venue. The Conference was a major international event. Cambridge medievalists were joined by colleagues from various countries and different disciplines. The papers will be published in 2007 by Harvey Miller/Brepols as a sister volume to the exhibition catalogue.

The key to the success of the exhibition, the catalogue, and the conference was the truly collaborative nature of all these aspects. From the lenders to the members of the exhibition committee, from the authors and sponsors to the designers and publishers, from students, technicians and conservators to photographers, IT specialists, and publicity managers, each and everyone put their expertise and heart into it.

What next? The 200 exhibits that made it into the Cambridge Illuminations were the tip of the iceberg. They were selected out of some 4,000 illuminated manuscripts preserved in the libraries of Cambridge. This staggering total is the subject of a much bigger enterprise, the Cambridge Illuminations Research Project (www.fitzmuseum.cam.ac.uk). It aims to produce a complete catalogue of the Western medieval and Renaissance illuminated manuscripts in the Fitzwilliam Museum and the Colleges of Cambridge in some 25 volumes that will begin to appear from 2007 onwards.

Dr. Stella Panayotova, The Fitzwilliam Museum