Cutting from Digestum vetus
This is a manuscript leaf cutting from the Digestum vetus, a legal text of Roman law, painted around 1340 in a European workshop and held by the J. Paul Getty Museum. The picture shows a medieval painted scene of rural labour in gold-ground miniature style, with bright ultramarine and red pigments. A designer might take its flat patterned figures, gilded ground and saturated blues and reds as a model for medieval-style decorative borders and folk motifs.
