H Noel Humphreys: The Illuminated Books of the Middle Ages: an account of the development and progress of the art of illumination, as a distinct branch of pictorial ornamentation, from the IVth to the XVIIth centuries., Illustrated by a Series of Examples., Executed on Stone and Printed in Colours by Owen Jones. Longman, Brown, Green, and Longmans, London, 1849...Folio (56 cm), [2], 15 pp., letterpress title printed in red and black, additional chromolithographic title, 39 chromolithographic plates and one uncoloured plate. Half Morocco over red cloth, spine with raised bands, gilt-lettered title, all edges gilt (binding worn but sound, with rubbing to extremities and some staining to boards; damp staining and toning throughout, occasionally heavy ). An important and lavishly produced survey of the art of illumination from the fourth to the seventeenth century, by Henry Noel Humphreys (1810-1879), one of the leading Victorian interpreters of medieval art, with plates executed by Owen Jones, the foremost designer and chromolithographer of the period. The text provides a concise but learned overview of Roman, Byzantine, Insular, Carolingian, Gothic, and Renaissance illumination, reflecting contemporary scholarship and the nineteenth-century revival of interest in medieval ornament. The magnificent full-page chromolithographic plates, printed from stone in rich colours and often at the scale of the originals, reproduce some of the finest examples of manuscript illumination, including leaves from the Lindisfarne Gospels, Italian Renaissance manuscripts, Franco-Flemish court productions, and Gothic devotional books. The plates remain vivid and striking,  good only copy due to staining of one of the most significant Victorian publications on medieval art, but still a rare hard to find book. (Heavy Folio)