Historiated Initial from an antiphonal
This is a manuscript antiphonal from around 1260, made by an unknown scribe and illuminator, probably in France, for use in church liturgy. The single picture is a historiated initial, a large letter whose inner space holds a small scene of a mounted knight in armour charging with a lance, set in blue and vermilion scrollwork with gold-dotted red and blue stars and a dragon-like creature at the lower edge. A designer could take its dense, flat, ornamental pattern-making, with interlaced scrolls and star motifs framing a single figure.
