White vine-stem

A white vine-stem or white vine is a kind of border or initial decoration found in illuminated manuscripts and incunabula. Sometimes the Italian term bianchi girari is also used in English.

White vine-stems, left and down, decorate the margins and the initial V of this page in Life of Alphonso VI, King of Aragon and Naples, an Italian manuscript from c. 1460.

The decoration consists of entangled white vines, usually contrasted with a colourful background. The stems themselves are often simply parchment left unpainted. It became popular among Florentine illuminators in the early 15th century, as a conscious imitation of forms found in Romanesque illuminated manuscripts, thought at the time to be antique forms. For this reason, it was considered suitable to use white vine-stems to decorate texts by classical authors and humanist books.[1][2] From Florence the use of white vine-stems as a decorative element later spread to Rome and Naples, not least through the prolific work of Gioacchino de’ Gigantibus, during the second half of the century.[3]