Limn (pronounced lim)
(1) To
represent in drawing or painting; to delineate (rare except as literary device
and also used figuratively).
(2) To
portray in words; to describe (rare except as literary device).
(3) To
illuminate (in the archaic sense) manuscripts; to decorate with gold or some
other bright colour (obsolete except in historic references)
1400–1450:
From the late Middle English limnen,
limyne, lymm, lymn & lymne (to
illuminate (a manuscript)), a variant of the Middle English luminen (to illuminate (a manuscript)),
a short-form variant of enluminen or enlumine (to shed light upon,
illuminate; to enlighten; to make bright or clear; to give colour to; to
illuminate (a manuscript); to depict, describe; to adorn or embellish with
figures of speech or poetry; to make famous, glorious, or illustrious), from the
Old & Middle French enluminer (to
illumine (a manuscript)), from the Latin illūminō
(to brighten, light up; to adorn; to make conspicuous), the construct being il- (a variant of in- (the prefix used
in the sense of “in, inside”)) + lūminō
(to brighten, illuminate; to reveal), the construct being from lūmen (genitive luminis) (radiant energy; light; (and used poetically) brightness”)
(from the primitive Indo-European lewk-
(bright; to shine; to see)) + -ō (the
suffix forming regular first-conjugation verbs). The more familiar derived form in Latin was inlūmināre (to embellish; to brighten (literally
“light up”), related obviously to related to
lucere (to shine), the idea identifiable in the Modern English lustre.
Limn’s
figurative sense of “portray, depict” which persists in literary and poetic use
(some journalists also like the archaic flourish) was in use by the 1590s. The derived forms include the verbs dislimn, dislimns,
dislimning & dislimned (to remove the outlines of; to efface); enlimn enlimns,
enlimning & enlimned) (to adorn (a book, manuscript etc) by illuminating or
ornamenting with coloured and decorated letters and figures, the adjective
unlimned (not limned or depicted), outlimn (to sketch out or delineate) and the
noun limner (plural limners) (one who limns or portrays. The use of limning as a noun described a
depiction (the definitional boundaries of which shifted over the centuries). The spelling limne was (obsolete) by the
seventeenth century. Limn & limned
are verbs, limner is a noun & limming is a noun & verb; the two nouns
plural are limners & limnings.
Two limnings in miniature from Les Très Riches Heures du Duc de Berry.
In the
popular imagination, the illuminate manuscript is one where the art has a
quality of vibrancy, the colors vivid, typified by Les Très Riches Heures du Duc de Berry (The Very Rich Hours of the
Duke of Berry) (1413-1416) by Dutch miniature painters, the brothers Herman,
Paul, and Jean de Limbourg from the city of Nijmegen. The volume is now in the collections of the Musée
Condé in the Château de Chantilly, Chantilly, France. January (left) and September (right) were two
of a number of illustrations in a seasonal theme and as well as of interest to
historians of art, the depictions have been used as documentary evidence of
aspects of lifestyle as varied as the place of animals in society to the colors
of garments. In the tradition of the
International Gothic of fourteenth & fifteenth centuries (the successor
epoch to the High Gothic) the book is noted for its detail, refinement and use of
gold leaf though quite how reliable as a historic record such documents are has
been questioned; while not exactly the Instagram of the age, they were
certainly idealized and produced for whomever it was prepared to pay for the
commission.
Limno- is a word-forming element used in science in the sense
of “of or pertaining to lakes and fresh water; the study of bodies of fresh
water” and dates from 1892 when the name for the discipline appeared in
scientific papers, the first to use the term apparently the Swiss geologist
François-Alphonse Forel (1841-1912). The
related forms are limnological, limnetic, limnophile (there seem not to be any
limnophobes), limnologist and the marvellous adjective limnophilous (loving or
having an affinity towards lakes). The
noun limnology does not describe the study of illuminated manuscripts and despite
the spelling is unrelated, the construct being limno-, from the Ancient Greek
λίμνη (límnē) (pool of standing
water, tidal pool, pond, marsh, lake," a word of uncertain origin but
perhaps connected to the Latin limus (mud),
from the primitive Indo-European root slei
& lei- (slime), via the notion of
“moistness, standing water), from or closely related to λιμήν (limḗn) (harbor)
& λειμών (leimṓn) (moist
place, meadow) + -(o)logy.
The suffix -ology was formed from -o- (as an interconsonantal vowel) +
-logy. The origin in English of the
-logy suffix lies with loanwords from the Ancient Greek, usually via Latin and
French, where the suffix (-λογία) is an integral part of the word loaned (eg
astrology from astrologia) since the
sixteenth century. French picked up -logie from the Latin -logia, from the Ancient Greek -λογία (-logía).
Within Greek, the suffix is an -ία (-ía)
abstract from λόγος (lógos) (account,
explanation, narrative), and that a verbal noun from λέγω (légō) (I say, speak, converse, tell a story). In English the suffix became extraordinarily
productive, used notably to form names of sciences or disciplines of study,
analogous to the names traditionally borrowed from the Latin (eg astrology from
astrologia; geology from geologia) and by the late eighteenth
century, the practice (despite the disapproval of the pedants) extended to
terms with no connection to Greek or Latin such as those building on French or
German bases (eg insectology (1766) after the French insectologie; terminology (1801) after the German Terminologie). Within a few decades of the intrusion of
modern languages, combinations emerged using English terms (eg undergroundology
(1820); hatology (1837)). In this
evolution, the development may be though similar to the latter-day
proliferation of “-isms” (fascism; feminism et al).
Two folio pages from Les Très Riches Heures du Duc de Berry.
Intriguingly different from most in the genre is the Black Hours Manuscript (known also as the Morgan Black Hours), created between 1460-1480 (some sources claim the final artwork was completed by 1475) in Bruges in what is now the Flemish Region of Belgium. Created probably for a patron or member of the Burgundian Court, it’s now held in Manhattan’s Morgan Library and Museum. What is most striking about the Black Hours is the extensive use of dark blueish hues as the predominant background shading. Highly unusual in any artistic form in this era, the color occurs because of the extremely corrosive process used to dye the vellum with iron gall ink. The black pages are a rarity (and at the time an expensive one) and the miniatures all use tones, the palette throughout very limited and restricted to blue, old rose, green, gray and white, with a few touches of gold, a radical departure from the usual splashes of yellow and scarlet, the margins decorated with blue borders, gold acanthus leaves and the expected drolleries. So distinctive are the stylistic elements that historians of art continue to debate the influences on the creators and traces of its motifs appear often in modern graphic art.
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