Mysteries of vernacular: Miniature - Jessica Oreck

Transcriber: Andrea McDonough
Reviewer: Bedirhan Cinar

Mysteries of vernacular miniature, something distinctively smaller than other members of its type or class. Miniature traces its roots to the Latin, minium, which meant "red lead." Minium referred, in particular, to a compound of lead used as a pigment in Medieval times. In those days, because there were no printing presses, groups of scribes were tasked with painstakingly copying all books by hand.

Whenever they needed to denote a chapter break or a division of text, scribes would switch from standard black to the red pigment, minium. Another important visual device used to increase the prominence of certain portions of text was to set them off with large, ornate, and colorful capital letters, often surrounded by tiny, detailed paintings. The Italians began to refer to these elaborate and diminutive paintings as miniatura, illuminations.

Because of the necessarily small size of the paintings, miniatura began to be associated with all things wee and spawned to other words with the same base, like the Latin minimum, for least. Miniatura was transmuted into English in the 16th century as the word, miniature, and since that time, it has had the exact same meaning we use today.