At the Getty, the Beauty of Medieval Manuscripts Is in the Materials

October 5, 2026 / Sophie Clearwater /

The Rejection of Joachim and Anna’s Offering from a book of hours About 1410-30. Attributed to the Rohan Master or immediate circle; tempera colors, gold, and ink on parchment, 26 × 18.5 cm (10 1/4 × 7 5/16 in.). Getty Museum, Ms. 112 (2014.56), recto. Courtesy the Getty Museum

Bookbinding is not what it used to be. And no one knows that better than Nancy Turner, conservator of manuscripts at the Getty Museum and curator of “The Making of a Medieval Manuscript,” through March 14. On view are Christian volumes from Europe, Armenia and Ethiopia, as well as items of Jewish and Muslim origin.

It begins with parchment, which is not vellum, and is definitely not papyrus. “We decided instead to use parchment as the catch-all word, and we tend not to use the word vellum, which is calf skin,” she explains about the material that made up the writing surface on the collection of volumes in the show dating as far back as the 10th Century. “We end up qualifying the word parchment instead to say it’s calf skin parchment, goat skin parchment, or sheep skin parchment. Here we call everything parchment.”

The process began with the animal pelt being soaked over a week or so in a caustic lime bath that broke down the contact between hair follicles and skin. At the end of this process, the hair could be brushed off, leaving a clean, high-alkaline surface that was then soaked free of lime solution. Stretching on a wooden frame with constant tightening over days increased the surface area of the pelt while it was scraped with a curved blade. After smoothing the surface with pumice it was dusted with a sticky powder, making it receptive to ink. Once it was removed from the frame, it was cut into rectangular sheets and made ready for the scribe.

Included in the exhibition is a French manuscript known as The Story of Two Lovers whose pages feature lines for guiding the scribe. Ink was derived from oak galls, a growth on an oak tree resulting from nesting insects.

“These are very potent because they have an acid in them called gallic acid,” says Turner, noting other items like soot or burned cherry pits were also used. “In the medieval recipe books they’re called Aleppo galls. These get crushed and ground up in water which has metal sulfate added to it, iron, which creates a chemical reaction that turns into, with a gum arabic, a gallic acid iron solution. When it’s drawn with a pen, it’s relatively transparent. But when it oxidizes in the air it turns into a deep, dark black and etches into the parchment because it’s acidic.”

*Prophets and Apostles* from a Gospel book, about 1480 – 1520. Ethiopian; tempera on parchment, each leaf: 34.5 × 25.6 cm (13 9/16 × 10 1/16 in.). Getty Museum, Ms. 105 (2010.17), fols. 6v–7. Courtesy the Getty Museum

Ink was applied with quills, usually sourced from a goose, soaked in water then dried and hardened with heat and sand before being sharpened to a nib and split to facilitate the flow of ink. In The Story of Two Lovers, spaces were marked for narrative illuminations, which were left blank on the page, and for painted decorations in the margins which were filled with leaves of blue derived from azurite, malachite or lapis, green made from terra verde, red from ocher and yellow, also from ocher, with fixing agents made from tempera or gum arabic (sap from the acacia).

“So the scribe has done their work. Then the border illuminator has done theirs, but the final illumination hasn’t been finished. So the gilding, first they put an adhesive down that could be either a flat gum, like gum ammoniac, or bole, which is a clay,” explains Turner. “It will first be painted on in the areas to receive gold, then left to dry a bit, and then a huff of one’s breath to activate the sticky qualities. Then they might cut the gold leaf into smaller pieces and lay it down, area by area.”

Application of pale pigments around the illumination follows, with darker shades added next. In the Rothschild Pentateuch, a manuscript containing the first five books of the Torah, one of the pages on display is embellished with gold and silver leaf and painted with different pigments depending on availability—lead white, orange-hued lead red, organic pink, copper green and azurite blue.

“Sometimes pigments that have sulfur in them, like vermilion, or orpiment, which is an arsenic sulfide, can also induce something like lead white to darken,” notes Turner. “So we conservators call that inherent vice if one material can harm another like that. And likewise, silver can tarnish over time.”

A highlight of the show is the Petau Hours, part of the Rothschild collection, opened to two illuminations, The Angel of the Annunciation and The Virgin in Prayer, painted in gold by artist Jean Poyet dating to 1495-1500.

“So it’s gold ink, it’s not leaf,” Turner notes. “It just has this warm, beautiful glow to it. The recipes describe actually taking gold leaf and grinding it up, and also mixing it with an adhesive, probably a gum arabic again, to make it flow off the brush.”

*Solomon Writing* from a Bible, 1637-38. Malnazar (Armenian, active about 1630s) and Aghap’ir (Armenian, active about 1630s), tempera colors, gold paint, and gold leaf on parchment, 25.2 × 18.3 cm (9 15/16 × 7 3/16 in.). Getty Museum, Ms. Ludwig I 14 (83.MA.63), fol. 358v. Courtesy the Getty Museum

Binding the books involved a wooden spine through which folded pages were sewn using linen twine onto flexible leather thongs which were then laced onto wooden boards covered in silk, precious metals or leather, as seen in a large Christian Bible on display.

“This is oak, that’s a quarter inch thick. Medieval bindings are put together mechanically with lacings, joins that are not relying on glue. This manuscript was part of a chained library,” Turner says of the 15th-century volume, pointing out a heavy-duty iron hasp that would connect to a chain and rod to keep the book from being stolen. “This is a Bible from a cathedral library. So this would have been seated on a shelf, maybe at an angle or laying flat. To open this book, you have to kind of pinch it a little bit to release the clasp. It’s putting pressure on the parchment, a preservation machine to keep air pollutants out, moisture out. So when you open this book, it’s like glistening brand new.”

The exhibition will have two rotations of objects on display, with the second beginning Nov. 24. Included will be an Ethiopian Bible dating to around 1500 and an Armenian Bible from the 17th Century, which will replace the Rothschild Pentateuch. The incoming Ethiopian manuscript includes vermilion partially derived from opium, and indigo, but no gold leaf.

The earliest manuscripts on display were made mainly for the clergy and the aristocracy, but with the Renaissance came a merchant class of consumers. “Readers include those who are interested in ancient history. And there are certainly many literate people in church who are reading Latin, they need to conduct the mass. And the Quran, these are being used in schools or in mosques,” explains Turner about the audience for these stunning volumes. “There’s a lot of people in between who can read, too.”