One evidence
of this is the diversity of opinion on the true reading of certain
proper names in the original MS. containing the oldest text of Tacitus
which happens to be a Lombard MS. The characters and other examples of
the eleventh to the thirteenth century that have been published at Monte
Cassino, however, fully illustrate the peculiarities of the handwriting,
and give besides several splendid examples of calligraphy.[41]
[41] The La Cava MSS. have been described by P. Gillaume in an essay
published at Naples, 1877, and those of Monte Cassino by A. Caravita,
Monte Cassino, 1860-71.
One of the earliest illuminated Italian MS. which bears a date is a
Volume of Letters of St. Bernard, now in the Library of Laon. It is very
seldom that the earlier scribes and illuminators who produced Italian
MSS. or worked in Italy were Italians. They were usually foreigners and
mostly Frenchmen, and the art was looked upon at the beginning of the
fourteenth century as a French art. This very decided example of Italian
work is already different from the French work of the same period. The
profile foliages have already acquired that peculiar trick of sudden
change and reversion of curve, showing the other side of a leaf with
change of colour, which is a marked characteristic of all
fourteenth-century Italian illumination.
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