As a rule, when I come across individually displayed drop cap and illuminated letters, I share each of them in a single post. However, when I found a 16th Century manuscript, graciously photographed and displayed on a university website, I knew the images would have to be grouped together. Each one of these beautiful letter images was hand drawn and painted. They have a similar look and feel to them and I suspect it would have been darn near impossible to come up with unique descriptions for each one. Plus, I think it makes it easier to choose which one to use when they are all together this way.
Most of the other illuminated letters from this work were a mixture of larger and smaller images. For some reason, all 9 of the illuminated letter V illustrations were in the smaller size. They are no less lovely, just somewhat smaller.
Some regular visitors to ReusableArt have suggested that I leave some of the images in the form I found them and not edit them too much. Due to the nature of how these drop cap letter V images were hand-painted, I will leave it up to you to decide how much you might want to square them off, clean up any of the small misses and remove the surrounding page elements.
Blue Illuminated Letter V Illustrations
The un-named artist created a group of blue illuminated letter V illustrations with green, red and white accents. Each of the letters are presented on a beige speckled background with red flowers and green leaves. They used 3 different types of flowers and a differing number of leaves to decorate each letter image.
White Illuminated Letter V Images
The manuscript was a religious work, more than likely commissioned by the Catholic Church. Books of any sort and particularly ones with this much detail were hideously expensive in those days and often the Church was the only one able to commission them. Within the manuscript were these 5 white illuminated letter V images. The letter itself was created with white paint and grey shading. It appears on a beige speckled background. All of the white letter V’s were decorated with a blue flower and green leaves.
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.
