Universal Divinity

The Medieval Era is an age of belief, of close connection with Christianity, of doctrine elaboration and of faithful service to the church. Yet it is an age that cities and territories expand gradually and take their shape, academic centers have been constituted among monasteries. By the end of the 12th century, the constitution of universities began to promote the communication and development of academia, with the concomitance of considerable paintings and productions on manuscript books. Manuscript is a kind of book with hand-painting and decoration supplemented by Bible selection written on parchment, in which the minitype delicate illustration is known as miniature painting. It is painted colorfully, decorated with silver and gold with an extremely rigorous and meticulous attitude handedly. The original purpose of manuscript is to interpret biblical doctrine with image, while in the late Middle Ages, the realistic naturalism affected by International Gothic Style makes the regular religious themes mixed with various life scenes depicted, to undertake the function of Bible commentaries with the alteration of single religious symbol. In this paper, I will make a detailed analysis to the late medieval manuscript paintings with the iconologic explanation, to clarify the process of development and evolution of religious symbolic art in this period, and attempt to explore its significance to the iconologic principle and the influence of future painting development.