A presentation miniature or dedication miniature is a miniature painting often found in illuminated manuscripts, in which the patron or donor is presented with a book, normally to be interpreted as the book containing the miniature itself. The miniature is thus symbolic, and presumably represents an event in the future. Usually it is found at the start of the volume, as a frontispiece before the main text, but may also be placed at the end, as in the Vivian Bible, or at the start of a particular text in a collection.
In earlier manuscripts the recipient of the book may be a dead saint, the founder of a monastery or monastic order, for example, and the person handing over the book the abbot, or sometimes the scribe of the book. The genre is an extension of other forms of dedication portraits, for example wall-paintings or mosaics in churches showing the person who commissioned the church holding a model of it. Ultimately they stretch back to scenes where classical rulers receive tribute, or those where a procession of Early Christian martyrs carry their crowns to present Christ. The miniatures are often found in luxury books presented to the emperor or another major figure, which usually followed significant donations of land to the monastery concerned.
In the early period the manuscripts concerned are normally religious books, especially liturgical ones. The texts are old, and the "offering" represented is the creation of an expensive illuminated manuscript. In the late Middle Ages works, often secular ones, are generally presented by their author or translator, though lavish copies of older texts may also still receive presentation miniatures. In these first cases the "offering" is usually the text itself, and the patron had presumably often paid for his own luxury copy himself, though some translators and even authors were also scribes. Now the text dedication to the patron, at this period often long and flowery, came to form part of the work itself, and at least the text was repeated in further copies. Such author's dedications, now far shorter, have remained part of the printed book. Sometimes presentation miniatures were also repeated in subsequent copies.
Michelle Brown distinguishes between presentation miniatures, where the actual book containing the miniature passed between the parties shown, and dedication miniatures in subsequent copies made for other people.
Early medieval
Royal presentation miniatures are especially a feature of Late Carolingian and Ottonian art, providing a series of portraits of the Ottonian emperors, mostly not actually shown with the book, and a precedent for later rulers. In a continuation and intensification of late Carolingian trends, many miniatures contain miniatures depicting the donors of the manuscripts to a church, including bishops, abbots and abbesses, and also the emperor.
In some cases successive miniatures show a kind of relay: in the Hornbach Sacramentary the scribe presents the book to his abbot, who presents it to St Pirmin, founder of Hornbach Abbey, who presents it to St Peter, who presents it to Christ, altogether taking up eight pages (with the facing illuminated tablets) to stress the unity and importance of the "command structure" binding church and state, on earth and in heaven. The Egbert Psalter also has four pages of presentation scenes, with two each spread across a full opening, the left with a bowing offeror in near profile, the right with the enthroned receiver. Egbert, Archbishop of Trier receives the book in the first pair, then presents it to Saint Peter in the second.
A large proportion of the portraits that survive of monastic scribes, who may also have been the artists for the miniatures, come from presentation miniatures, more typically showing presentations to either saints or other clergy who had commissioned books. Such scenes continue to appear in the Romanesque period.
The earliest surviving portrait of a reigning English king (coins excepted) and the earliest English presentation miniature shows Æthelstan presenting Saint Cuthbert with the copy of Bede's Life of Saint Cuthbert containing it, probably in 934. This was presented by Æthelstan to the saint's shrine in Chester-le-Street; southern-based medieval English kings were always careful to pay due respect to Cuthbert, the great saint of the North.