The Winchester Bible is a Romanesque

Romanesque art

Romanesque art refers to the art of Western Europe from approximately 1000 AD to the rise of the Gothic style in the 13th century, or later, depending on region. The preceding period is increasingly known as the Pre-Romanesque...

 illuminated manuscript

Illuminated manuscript

An illuminated manuscript is a manuscript in which the text is supplemented by the addition of decoration, such as decorated initials, borders and miniature illustrations...

 produced in Winchester

Winchester

Winchester is a historic cathedral city and former capital city of England. It is the county town of Hampshire, in South East England. The city lies at the heart of the wider City of Winchester, a local government district, and is located at the western end of the South Downs, along the course of...

 between 1160 and 1175. With folios measuring 583 x 396 mm., it is the largest surviving 12th-century English

English people

The English are a nation and ethnic group native to England, who speak English. The English identity is of early mediaeval origin, when they were known in Old English as the Anglecynn. England is now a country of the United Kingdom, and the majority of English people in England are British Citizens...

 Bible

Bible

The Bible refers to any one of the collections of the primary religious texts of Judaism and Christianity. There is no common version of the Bible, as the individual books , their contents and their order vary among denominations...

. It may still be seen at the Winchester Cathedral

Winchester Cathedral

Winchester Cathedral at Winchester in Hampshire is one of the largest cathedrals in England, with the longest nave and overall length of any Gothic cathedral in Europe...

 Library, its home for more than eight hundred years.

During the Romanesque period, the focus of major illumination in the West moved from the Gospel Book

Gospel Book

The Gospel Book, Evangelion, or Book of the Gospels is a codex or bound volume containing one or more of the four Gospels of the Christian New Testament...

 to the Psalter

Psalter

A psalter is a volume containing the Book of Psalms, often with other devotional material bound in as well, such as a liturgical calendar and litany of the Saints. Until the later medieval emergence of the book of hours, psalters were the books most widely owned by wealthy lay persons and were...

 and the Bible, and the Winchester manuscript is one of the most lavish of a group of Romanesque and early Gothic

Gothic art

Gothic art was a Medieval art movement that developed in France out of Romanesque art in the mid-12th century, led by the concurrent development of Gothic architecture. It spread to all of Western Europe, but took over art more completely north of the Alps, never quite effacing more classical...

 illuminated Bibles including the Codex Gigas

Codex Gigas

The Codex Gigas is the largest extant medieval manuscript in the world. It is also known as the Devil's Bible because of a large illustration of the devil on the inside and the legend surrounding its creation. It is thought to have been created in the early 13th century in the Benedictine...

, the Parc Abbey Bible

Parc Abbey Bible

The Parc Abbey Bible is a 12th century illuminated Bible. It was made in the Leuven region of Belgium at the Abbey of St. Mary of Parc. A colophon on folio 197 indicates that the codex was produced in 1148. The text is Latin and written in proto-gothic book script on vellum...

, the Fécamp Bible

Fécamp Bible

The Fécamp Bible is an illuminated Latin Bible. It was produced in Paris during the third quarter of the 13th century, and belonged the collection of Henry Yates Thompson....

 and the Morgan Bible

Morgan Bible

The Morgan Bible is a medieval picture bible of 44 folios. It is also called the Morgan Bible of Louis IX, the Book of Kings, the Crusader Bible, and the Maciejowski Bible...

.

The Bible comprises 468 folios of calf-skin parchment

Parchment

Parchment is a thin material made from calfskin, sheepskin or goatskin, often split. Its most common use was as a material for writing on, for documents, notes, or the pages of a book, codex or manuscript. It is distinct from leather in that parchment is limed but not tanned; therefore, it is very...

. Given the large size of the pages, each bifolium

Book folding

Book folding is the stage of the book production process in which the pages of the book are folded after printing and before binding.Until the middle 19th century, book folding was done by hand, and book folder was a trade...

 required an entire skin: it is estimated that the manuscript incorporated the hides of some 250 calves. Its first recorded mention, in 1622, describes the manuscript as a Bible in two volumes. Over the years it has been rebound twice, first in 1820, when it was divided into three volumes, and again in 1948. The Bible now spans four separate volumes bound in gold-tooled cream-coloured leather.

Although many of the illuminations remain unfinished, the text itself is complete. Unusually, nearly the entire manuscript is in the hand of a single scribe

Scribe

A scribe is a person who writes books or documents by hand as a profession and helps the city keep track of its records. The profession, previously found in all literate cultures in some form, lost most of its importance and status with the advent of printing...

, save for a few minor additions. Most manuscripts of this length would employ two or more scribes. It is estimated that the task of transcribing the entire Vulgate

Vulgate

The Vulgate is a late 4th-century Latin translation of the Bible. It was largely the work of St. Jerome, who was commissioned by Pope Damasus I in 382 to make a revision of the old Latin translations...

, here comprising both Old

Old Testament

The Old Testament, of which Christians hold different views, is a Christian term for the religious writings of ancient Israel held sacred and inspired by Christians which overlaps with the 24-book canon of the Masoretic Text of Judaism...

 and New Testament

New Testament

The New Testament is the second major division of the Christian biblical canon, the first such division being the much longer Old Testament....

s, two versions of the Psalms

Psalms

The Book of Psalms , commonly referred to simply as Psalms, is a book of the Hebrew Bible and the Christian Bible...

, and the Apocrypha

Biblical apocrypha

The word "apocrypha" is today often used to refer to the collection of ancient books printed in some editions of the Bible in a separate section between the Old and New Testaments...

, would have taken him some four years.

In contrast, the illuminations reflect the work of at least six different hands. Art historian and educator Walter Oakeshott first identified and named these artists in 1945, referring to them as the Master of the Leaping Figures, the Master of the Apocrypha Drawings, the Master of the Genesis Initial, the Master of the Amalekite, the Master of the Morgan Leaf, and the Master of Gothic Majesty. Close examination of the illustration often reveals the work of two separate hands, with one providing the original sketch or design and the other painting in the colour and details.

The artwork of the Winchester Bible is incomplete: many illuminations were left unfinished, while others were deliberately removed. The illuminations throughout the manuscript appear in varying stages of completion, ranging from rough outlines and inked drawings to unpainted gilded

Gilding

The term gilding covers a number of decorative techniques for applying fine gold leaf or powder to solid surfaces such as wood, stone, or metal to give a thin coating of gold. A gilded object is described as "gilt"...

 images and figures complete in all but the final details. In all, 48 of the major historiated initial

Historiated initial

A historiated initial is an enlarged letter at the beginning of a paragraph or other section of text, which contains a picture. Strictly speaking, an inhabited initial contains figures that are decorative only, without forming a subject, whereas in a historiated initial there is an identifiable...

s that begin each book stand complete.

Over the years, the manuscript has suffered at the hands of thieves and collectors. Some nine illuminated initials and at least one full-page illustration have been removed entirely. Of these, only one (the initial of Obadiah

Obadiah

Obadiah is a Biblical theophorical name, meaning "servant of Yahweh" or "worshipper of Yahweh." It is related to "Abdeel", "servant of God", which is also cognate to the Arabic name "Abdullah". Turkish name Abdil or Abdi. The form of Obadiah's name used in the Septuagint is Obdios; in Latin it is...

) has been recovered and restored to the text. Another missing folio, showing scenes from the lives of Samuel on the recto and of King David on the verso, is now in the Morgan Library and is commonly referred to as the Morgan Leaf. Whether other similar full-page miniatures have been removed is unknown.