Singing with light: an interdisciplinary study on the medieval Ajuda Songbook

ABSTRACT

A monument to Galician-Portuguese medieval lyric, the Ajuda Songbook (Cancioneiro da Ajuda) also contains an exceptional series of illuminations. Employing a multidisciplinary approach, this article uncovers the composition of the colour paints used in the Songbook, providing further insight into the circumstances of its production. It also connects the materiality of this manuscript to its economic and cultural context. Our determination of its molecular palette – and the identification of both orpiment and mosaic gold in particular – supports the argument put forward by scholars of medieval literature that the Songbook dates to the end of the thirteenth or beginning of the fourteenth century. We also highlight the extraordinary state of conservation of the lapis lazuli paint, and the presence of a pink colour made from brazilwood – the first reported use of this pigment in medieval manuscript illumination. Finally, we discuss the iconography of the Songbook’s musical scenes with an emphasis on the depicted instruments. We consider these illuminations and the texts they accompany within their Iberian context (especially in relation to the Cantigas de Santa Maria) and offer a brief comparison with those found in contemporary Occitan and French songbooks.

KEYWORDS:

• Songbook
• Galician-Portuguese lyric
• manuscript illumination
• medieval colours
• medieval music
• conservation

Acknowledgements

The authors would like to thank tthe director of Palácio Nacional da Ajuda (PNA), José Alberto Ribeiro, and the director of the PNA Library, Cristina Pinto Basto for their generous support and collaboration. This work has been financially supported by Portuguese funds through FCT - Fundação para a Ciência e a Tecnologia under the project CORES PhD programme PD/00253/2012 as well as PhD grants (SFRH/BD/76789/2011; PD/BD/105895/2014). We thank the Associated Laboratory for Sustainable Chemistry- Clean Processes and Technologies- LAQV which is financed by FCT/MEC (UID/QUI/50006/2015) and co-financed by the ERDF under the PT2020 Partnership Agreement (POCI-01-0145-FERDER - 007265). Finally, special thanks also go to the scholars who made important contributions to improve this work, especially Patricia Stirnemann and Manuel Pedro Ferreira.

Notes on contributors

Graça Videira Lopes, PhD (1993), professor at the FCSH/UNL (Lisbon Nova University), and a member of IEM (Institute of Medieval Studies), has been working for several years in the area of Medieval Literature, namely in Galician-Portuguese Medieval Lyrics. In the past years, she was the chief researcher of “Littera’s Project”, a project funded by FCT (Portuguese Agency for Science and Technology), which resulted in the “Galician-Portuguese Medieval Songs” database and site (http://cantigas.fcsh.unl.pt/index.asp?ling=eng).

Luís Correia de Sousa graduated in Musicology at the Universidade Nova de Lisboa and took his PhD in the same field of study. He is a researcher in the Institute for Medieval Studies and CESEM (Center of Studies of Sociology and Musical Aesthetics), in the Faculty of Social Sciences and Humanities of University Nova of Lisbon.

Maria João Melo is Associate Professor at the Department of Conservation and Restoration of the Faculty of Sciences and Technology of the Nova University in Lisbon and a research scientist at REQUIMTE (Associated Laboratory for Sustainable Chemistry - Clean Processes and Technologies). Her current research subjects are focused on the study of colour of Portuguese Medieval Illuminations and the study of the molecules of colour in Art and Nature.

Paula Nabais is a PhD student at the Department of Conservation and Restoration, on the identification of dyes with micro-spectrofluorimetry, based on the study of medieval manuscripts from different ambiences: the Ajuda Songbook, the Book of Hours of Queen D. Leonor and Bibles from the Alcobaça Monastery.

Rita Castro holds an MA in Conservation and Restoration and she is currently finishing a PhD on the colour and meaning in medieval manuscripts based on the study of three medieval copies of the Book of Birds by Hugh of Fouilloy preserved in Portuguese libraries and the Santa Cruz of Coimbra Romanesque collection.

ORCiD

Paula Nabais http://orcid.org/0000-0002-7646-7470

Rita Castro http://orcid.org/0000-0002-9986-6028

Graça Videira Lopes http://orcid.org/0000-0002-9213-2910

Luís Correia de Sousa http://orcid.org/0000-0002-5672-6746

Maria João Melo http://orcid.org/0000-0001-7393-6801

Notes

1 Vasconcelos, Cancioneiro da Ajuda, vol. 2, 99–100.

2 Ramos, “O Cancioneiro da Ajuda”, vol. 1, 34.

3 Vasconcelos, Cancioneiro da Ajuda. The first volume includes the 310 texts of the codex, along with 157 love songs preserved in the sixteenth-century Italian cancioneiros, which she believed might have been in the original Songbook. The second volume contains the results of her research on the Songbook and on Galician-Portuguese lyrics, in general.

4 On the historiography of the manuscript, see Ramos, “O Cancioneiro da Ajuda” and Arbor Aldea, “Os estudos sobre o Cancioneiro da Ajuda”.

5 Stirnemann, “La Décoration du Chansonnier d’Ajuda”, 71.

6 Tavani, Ensaios Portugueses, 95. However, he later revised his position in Tavani, Trovadores e jograis, 82.

7 Oliveira, Depois do espectáculo trovadoresco, 265–7. The song by Charinho is not a love song, but a rather heterodox comparison between the king and the sea, likely related to the author's dismissal from the post of royal admiral in 1287, during the reign of Sancho IV of Castile and León (r. 1284–95).

8 Moralejo, “Iconografia e ilustração”, 321.

9 “Cantigas Medievais Galego-Portuguesas”, http://cantigas.fcsh.unl.pt (also available in English). The database offers the first comprehensive collection of Galician-Portuguese songs, images from manuscripts, music (including original medieval melodies, contemporary versions thereof, and original compositions that take the texts of medieval songs as a starting point), and other resources (Project Littera, PTDC/ELT/69985/2006).

10 Galvez, Songbook, 7.

11 Trovadores were noble while jograis were non-noble.

12 We do not know if this parchment is a fragment of a medieval manuscript or an isolated bi-folio. See Ferreira, “Ler o Pergaminho Vindel”, 20–1.

13 Tavani, Ensaios Portugueses, 120–2.

14 As happens in a song (A 18) wherein the troubadour João Soares Somesso says that he cannot rest while a vassal of his mistress lives and the commenter writes Mata-lo (Kill him) (when the true meaning of the verse is that this alleged vassal is the troubadour himself).

15 Pedro, “Análise paleográfica”.

16 We do not know if what was transcribed was intended to be the entire project. The manuscript is clearly incomplete, as several folios are missing; in addition, the last song ends, quite oddly, in the middle of a verse.

17 Ramos, “O Cancioneiro da Ajuda”, vol. 2, 650.

18 Authors' names are documented in B and V, which allows us to identify those in A. Still, the authors of 20 of the songs remain anonymous.

19 In the remaining strophes this space does not exist, which indicates that the melody was repeated. However, space is also left for the music in some of the findas (the short strophes ending certain songs), implying that in these cases the melody would have been different.

20 Ramos argues that the Songbook might have been in the important library of D. Teodósio (1510–63), Duke of Bragança, located in the palace of Vila Viçosa (not far from Évora): its inventory (1564) documents a volume described as “Obras del Rey dom Denis feitas de mão de pergaminho de marqua grande em taboa”. Ramos, “O Cancioneiro da Ajuda”, vol. 1, 111.

21 This is a fragment of an expanded copy of the Livro de Linhagens do conde D. Pedro, i.e. the aforementioned Dom Pedro Afonso, Count of Barcelos. The original may have been written around 1341–3; José Mattoso dates this copy to 1381–3 (Mattoso, Livro de Linhagens do Conde D. Pedro, 34–5). For an edition of this fragment, see Brocardo, Livro de Linhagens do Conde D. Pedro.

22 This date is attributed due to the decoration of the binding common to the sixteenth century as well as to a signature of Pedro Homem in folio 88v of the Songbook (previously pasted down in the front wooden board of the binding). This signature is, together with other annotations, from the end of the fifteenth, beginning of the sixteenth century. Ramos, “O Cancioneiro da Ajuda”, vol. 1, 453; Conceição Casanova, in discussion with the authors, November 2015; and Nascimento, “O restauro do Cancioneiro da Ajuda”, 286–7.

23 Nascimento, “O restauro do Cancioneiro da Ajuda,” 277.

24 Ibid., 275–305.

25 Ramos, “O Cancioneiro da Ajuda”, vol. 1, 240–3.

26 Ibid., vol. 1, 247–8.

27 Seixas, “A encadernação manuelina”, 169.

28 This occurred in the last restoration, in 2000. Nascimento, “O restauro do Cancioneiro da Ajuda”, 284–90.

29 This Pedro Homem was possibly one of the poets of the Cancioneiro Geral, and a squire in the court of D. João II. Ramos, “O Cancioneiro da Ajuda”, vol. 1, 59–64.

30 Maria Ana Ramos proposes that this can be decoded as cabinet (armário) 5, number 47, or as cabinet A, shelf 5, number 47. She states that it most likely dates between the 1540s and 1560s. Ramos, “O Cancioneiro da Ajuda”, vol. 1, 53.

31 Stirnemann, “La Décoration du Chansonnier d’Ajuda”, 71–86.

32 Stirnemann, “La décoration du chansonnier d’Ajuda”, 73.

33 Ibid., 74.

34 “Unlike the first ones, it is precisely the latest illuminations that required further time in the painting of the troubadours' seats. This detail is important because it refutes the hypothesis that the artist illuminated the manuscript from the beginning to the end, following the text and having increasingly less time to finish his work. If his interruptions mean that the work was finished earlier than expected, then he did not paint the images in the order that they appear in the codex.” Ramos, “O Cancioneiro da Ajuda”, vol. 1, 413.

35 Melo et al., “Colour: An Interdisciplinary Approach”; and Melo, Castro, and Miranda, “Colour: between Beauty and Meaning”.

36 Melo and Claro, “Bright Light”; Claro et al., “Identification of Red Colorants in Cultural Heritage by Microspectrofluorimetry”; and Claro et al., “The Use of Microspectrofluorimetry for the Characterization of Lake Pigments”.

37 Mas et al., “Screening and Quantification of Proteinaceous Binders in Medieval Paints”; and Miguel et al., “Combining Infrared Spectroscopy with Chemometric Analysis”.

38 Melo and Claro, “Bright Light”; Miguel et al., “Combining Infrared Spectroscopy with Chemometric Analysis”; and Strolovitch, “Old Portuguese in Hebrew Script.”

39 Melo and Claro, “Bright Light”. The Supplemental file contains the description of the folios and areas analysed as well as of the equipment and spectral information not shown in this text, available at http://www.dcr.fct.unl.pt/sites/www.dcr.fct.unl.pt/files/documentos/SUPPLEMENTAL%20%20MATERIAL%2001_09_2016.pdf. And at a future date in Paula Nabais's PhD thesis.

40 Within a specific region, at a specific scriptorium, or during a specific period of time.

41 Coupry, “Les pigments utilisés pour l’enluminure à Fécamp”, 69.

42 Melo et al., “Colour: An Interdisciplinary Approach”; Melo, Castro, and Miranda, “Colour: between Beauty and Meaning”; Muralha, Miguel, and Melo, “Micro-Raman Study of Cistercian Manuscripts”; and Melo and Miranda, “Secrets et découvertes en couleur”.

43 Coupry, “A la recherche des pigments”.

44 Ricciardi, Pallipurath, and Rose, “It's Not Easy Being Green”. Considering that the greens were identified by visible reflectance spectroscopy (FORS), a technique that does not provide unmistakeable molecular characterization, caution must be taken with respect to this proposed chronology.

45 Melo, Castro, and Miranda, “Colour: between Beauty and Meaning”; Castro et al., “Combining SERS and microspectrofluorimetry”; Melo et al., “Spectroscopic Study of Brazilwood Paints”; and Lemos et al., “Regards croisés sur deux livres d'heures”.

46 Carmine is used thorough the text as “hue”, the attribute of colour perception denoted by carmine, and is not related with the molecule carminic acid.

47 Purple hues that extend past a more or less dark red also having a blue colour component: which is to say our colourant typically absorbs between 500 and 550/600 nm.

48 Vitorino, “A Closer Look at Brazilwood”; Melo et al., “Spectroscopic Study of Brazilwood Paints”; Vitorino et al., “New Insights into Brazilwood Lake Pigments”; Castro et al., “Combining SERS and Microspectrofluorimetry”; Melo et al., “Fernão Vaz Dourado's Colours”; and Roger, Villela-Petit, and Vandroy, “Les lacques de brésil dans l’enluminure médiévale”.

49 Orcein purple will not be considered in this study.

50 Castro, Melo, and Miranda, “The Secrets Behind the Colour”; and Melo et al., “Colour Degradation in Medieval Manuscripts”.

51 Melo et al., “Spectroscopic Study of Brazilwood Paints”; Melo et al., “O que nos dizem os materiais da cor?”; and Roger, Villela-Petit, and Vandroy, “Les lacques de brésil dans l’enluminure médiévale”. Before the colonization of Brazil by the Portuguese, which began in 1500, redwood was imported to Europe from Ceylon (Sri Lanka). Its presence in European trade peaked in the fifteenth to sixteenth centuries. In medieval technical treatises this colour was referred to as “brazil” or a similar term.

52 In the treatise De arte illuminandi, dated by Franco Brunello to the end of the fourteenth century, mosaic gold is indifferently designated as aurum musicum, purpurina, and purpureus color. The author of the treatise proposes that the designation “mosaic gold” derives from the fact that it was used “a dorare le tessere dei mosaici”, but there is no explanation for the term purpureus color. The pigment obtained following the recipes in medieval treatises, such as the Livro de como se fazem as cores, gives a brilliant metallic, golden-copper colour, provided that it is not over-milled; it is therefore interesting that in Portugal and Spain, metallic pigments are still commonly referred to as purpurinas. See purpurina in Kroustallis, “Diccionario de materias y técnicas”, 366.

53 Butler et al., “Mosaic Gold in Europe and China”; and Cruz, Afonso, and Matos, “The ‘Livro de como se fazem as cores’”, 99.

54 Melo, Castro, and Miranda, “Colour: between Beauty and Meaning”.

55 Melo et al., “Spectroscopic Study of Brazilwood Paints”.

56 Ibid.

57 Moura et al., “Charter of Vila Flor”; and Lauwers et al., “Pigment Identification of De Civitate Dei”.

58 Clarke, The Montpellier Liber Diversarum Arcium; Strolovitch, “O libro de komo se fazen as cores”; and Brunello, De arte illuminandi.

59 In the Supplemental material please find the spectral data used for the full paint characterization.

60 Minium was applied in the vestments of the nobles. As in the Portuguese Lorvão Beatus, many of the Songbook illuminations present degradation of this pigment, where a transformation from bright orange to brownish hues is visible. For more details on red lead degradation in medieval illuminations see Miguel et al., “A Study on Red Lead Degradation”. Vermilion was applied in the roofs of the architecture, in the vestments, and in several initials.

61 We detected copper on the blue initials, which may indicate the presence of azurite as an underlayer; however it was not possible to acquire any further molecular evidence for its use.

62 Parodi, “Lapislazzuli”, 21–32.

63 Clarke, The Montpellier Liber Diversarum Arcium, 120 [§1.27.11A] and [§1.27.35].

64 Grebe, “Value and Beauty”.

65 Vitorino, “A Closer Look at Brazilwood”; Melo et al., “Spectroscopic Study of Brazilwood Paints”; and Vitorino et al., “New Insights into Brazilwood Lake Pigments.”

66 Melo et al., “Organic Dyes in Illuminated Manuscripts”.

67 Pastoureau, Jésus chez le teinturier.

68 It is not considered a lightfast textile dye, so its success must have been due to either a special taste for this colour or its rarity, given the small quantities imported in the thirteenth century.

69 Miguel et al., “A Study on Red Lead Degradation”; and Melo et al., “Colour: An Interdisciplinary Approach”.

70 It would be worth pursuing a comparative analysis with the lapis lazuli colours applied in English medieval wall painting. Howard, “Blue Pigments”, 27–35. We thank Patricia Stirnemann for pointing out these examples of application of lapis lazuli in mural paintings to us.

71 Melo et al., “Colour Degradation in Medieval Manuscripts”.

72 Examples of proteins include egg white (glair) or yolk, parchment glue, and casein glue; polysaccharides include gum arabic, mesquite gum, and gum tragacanth. See Melo et al., “O que nos dizem os materiais da cor?”.

73 “On the solutions used to temper the colours and fix them to the parchment: the solutions [liquids] used to fix colours are as follows: chicken egg whites and yolks, gum arabic and gum tragacanth dissolved in clean spring water. In order to make it less brittle, honey, sugar or crystalized sugar water is added … .” Brunello, De arte illuminandi, 45–7.

74 Ramos, “O Cancioneiro da Ajuda”, vol. 1, 329–72.

75 Iron gall ink can be obtained by adding an iron salt to a tannin solution, or by adding a mixture of an iron and copper salt. These elements may be accompanied by lower amounts of other metallic elements (such as zinc) that allow us to distinguish between the compositions of various types of writing ink, even when the colour is indistinguishable to the naked eye. In the case of the Ajuda Songbook, the distinction is made based upon the proportions of iron (main element), copper, and zinc.

76 Ramos, “O Cancioneiro da Ajuda”, vol. 2, 6–7.

77 Clarke, The Montpellier Liber Diversarum Arcium, 1–4.

78 “There is found another yellow colour which is called ‘ochre’: namely that found in the region of Chiavenna and in many places, that is to say it is a sort of earth, but that which is brought from the town of Tours is the most valuable then others … ”, Clarke, The Montpellier Liber Diversarum Arcium, 116 [§1.20.1].

79 It is possible that saffron could have been applied as a glaze, but it can pass undetected if it is in a degraded state. See Clarke, “Evaluating Lost Manuscript Yellows”.

80 “It is probably the most substantial and comprehensive mediaeval painters' technical recipe book to survive, and summarizes the state of the art in the European workshops of the fourteenth century.” Clarke, The Montpellier Liber Diversarum Arcium, 1.

81 Cruz, Afonso and Matos, “The ‘Livro de como se fazem as cores’”, 99.

82 Possibly owing to its deadly toxicity, orpiment was gradually replaced by other synthetic yellows such as mosaic gold and, later, by lead tin yellow.

83 Muñoz Viñas and Farrell, Technical Analysis of Renaissance Illuminated Manuscripts, 28.

84 Brunello, De arte illuminandi, 54–8; and Cennino Cennini, Il libro dell’Arte, 48–9.

85 “Through analysis, these samples were identified as the extremely rare and overlooked pigment mosaic gold [… .] This discovery is particularly interesting because mosaic gold has rarely been identified in actual artworks, even though it is mentioned in numerous original recipes of the fifteenth century.” Muñoz Viñas and Farrell, Technical Analysis of Renaissance Illuminated Manuscripts, 26.

86 Thirteenth-century polychrome stone statue of Santa Ana in Santa Maria la Real, Sasamon, Spain. Edwards et al., “Raman Spectroscopic Studies”.

87 Edwards et al., “Raman Spectroscopic Studies”; Viñas and Farrell, Technical Analysis of Renaissance Illuminated Manuscripts, 27–8; Daveri et al., “An Uncovered XIII Century Icon”; Lauwers et al., “Pigment Identification of De Civitate Dei”; and Melo et al., “Spectroscopic Study of Brazilwood Paints”.

88 Viñas and Farrell, Technical Analysis of Renaissance Illuminated Manuscripts, 27–8. It is worth mentioning that in fifteenth-century books of hours, lead tin yellow admixed with blue was used to make green, and to highlight or shade the green colour. In the Ajuda Songbook this was done using orpiment. See Melo et al., “Spectroscopic Study of Brazilwood Paints”; and Araújo et al., “Ethical and Technical Concerns”.

89 We assume that the codex to which the Sharrer Parchment belonged was not illuminated. The great earthquake that destroyed Lisbon in 1755 (including the royal palace and its library) is the most commonly used justification for the loss of any Portuguese historical document or manuscript.

90 See Rosario Álvarez's discussion of similar instruments in the codices of the Cantigas de Santa Maria; Álvarez, “Los instrumentos musicales en los códices alfonsinos”, 77. About the cítola/citolón, see Ferreira, Cantus coronatus, 16–32. To know more about the identification of musical instruments see also Sousa, “Iconografia musical”, 141–156.

91 It is interesting to note that in a satirical song by Martim Soares (B 1357, V 965), which is addressed to a bad troubadour and musician, the use of trumpets (and also drums) is mentioned as evidence of his poor and uncourtly artistic qualities.

92 Ibid., 69.

93 New York, Morgan Library, Ms. M.638.

94 Minstrels with citoles, on the right, the same type of instrument found in the Ajuda manuscript, in the illuminations on folios 18, 29, 40v, 47, 48, 51v, 55, 60.

95 Stirnemann, “La Décoration du Chansonnier d’Ajuda”, 76–7.

96 Ibid., 76.

97 Ibid., 76.

98 The earliest dated Occitan songbook is manuscript D (Modena, Biblioteca Estense, alfa.r.4.4]), from 1254. The structure and organization of the Ajuda Songbook also follow that of its European counterparts in that the works are organized by author/troubadour in a roughly chronological way. See Paden, “Manuscripts”, 308. He adds: “Manuscripts D and V [1268] are the only two chansonniers that bear specific dates prior to the fourteenth century.” Ibid., 309.

99 Troubadours wrote in the southern French (Occitan) dialects, including Provençal and Limousin. Trouvères wrote in the northern French dialects – that is, the langues d’oïl as opposed to langue d’oc.

100 Ramos, “O Cancioneiro da Ajuda”, vol. 1: 389.

101 Folio 89 shows a hybrid straight flute and drum hybrid in a rather fantastical composition; fol. 165 contains what appears to be a gallant scene, without musical elements; also on the footer of fol. 235v there is a fantastical hybrid figure playing a viola.

102 Although the compositions are rather different from those in the Ajuda Songbook, both manuscripts are organized by author; R contains a significant number of melodies (161) written in tetragrams outlined in red.

103 Represented mostly in historiated initials, as in the late thirteenth-century Songbook Cangé (Paris, BnF, Fr. 846), where, among others, Thibaut de Champagne is depicted writing down a song (fol. 94r). This manuscript is organized, however, by the songs' alphabetical order.

104 Ramos, “O Cancioneiro da Ajuda”, vol. 1, 384.