Visual Images as a Way of Defining Identity:the Case of the Reconstructed Carmelite Missal

Abstract

The Carmelite Missal, London BL Additional 29704-05 & Additional 44892, is famous for two quite different reasons, firstly for its lavish  illumination and secondly for its post-medieval fate. In the nineteenth century, the children of the then owner, Philip Hanrott, cut it up  and pasted many of the illuminations in scrapbooks. Subsequently the manuscript became newsworthy because of the brilliant detective work done by Margaret Rickert, who reconstructed it from the fragments.1 The work of 3 illuminators may be detected,  whose work has been identified in other manuscripts, secular as well as religious; the manuscript has been described as a ‘foyer of  contemporary artists’.