My oh my what a lovely collection of 16th Century letter images I have to share today. They, along with almost 100 other drop cap images, were part of a French religious manuscript. More than likely the work was commissioned by the Catholic Church and may have been created by a monk. The scholars believe that every page except one may have been done by the same artist.
Blue, Gilded Illuminate Letter M Images
There were 5 lovely letter M images within the manuscript and the three larger ones were all gilded. I can only imagine how stunning these must be in person. The pictures are well-done but photos just can’t seem to truly capture the shine and shimmer of a gilded item.
All three of these gilded letter M images feature a letter M drawn in blue with white decorations. They also have white and grey decorations that surround the letter. The third has a bit of a musical feel to me and has a pair of dragon-like animals at the bottom. One has two light green leaves. All are lovely and in the public domain.
Small Illuminated Letter M images
A pair of small, blue illuminated letter M images round out the group of letters I’m sharing with you in this post. They are both decorated with red and white flowers and one also has a trio of green leaves.
I’ve left all of these images the way I found them. All of them have a black border around the letter. They are slightly off-square and the letters all extend outside of those borders. There’s also some small places where the background was not completely filled in. I’ll leave it to you to decide how much of the letters you wish to change and if you would want to remove any of the remaining guidelines.
This image is copyright free and in the public domain anywhere that extends copyrights 70 years after death or at least 120 years after publication when the original illustrator is unknown.
