Banderole

A Banderole (Fr. for a "little banner"), has both a literal descriptive meaning for its use by knights and ships, and is also heraldic device for representing bishops.

Bannerol, in its main uses is the same as banderole, and is the term especially applied to banners about a yard square carried at the funerals of great men and placed over the tomb. Often it commemorated a particular exploit of the person bearing the coat of arms.

Knights, bishops and ships

A Banderole is a small flag or streamer carried on the lance of a knight, or a long narrow flag, with cleft end flying from the mast-head of a ship in battle.

In heraldry, a banderole is a streamer hanging from beneath the crook of a bishop's crosier and folding over the staff, and for other small streamers or ribbons.

Art and architecture

The term is also used in art and architecture for a speech scroll or streamer, representing a roll of parchment carried by or surrounding a figure or object, for bearing an inscription, mainly during the medieval and Renaissance periods. In particular banderoles were used as attributes for Old Testament prophets, as may be seen in the Santa Trinita Maestà by Cimabue, (Uffizi, 1280–90), Duccio's Maestà (1308–11), and other works. The convention had a historical appropriateness, as the Old Testament was originally written on scrolls, whereas nearly all surviving New Testament manuscripts are codices (like modern books). They may also be used for the words of angels, especially Gabriel's greeting to Mary in Annunciation scenes.

Speech scroll

A speech scroll, also called a banderole or phylactery in art history, is an illustrative device denoting speech, song, or, in rarer cases, other types of sound.

Developed independently on two continents, the device was in use by European painters during the Medieval and Renaissance periods as well as by artists within Mesoamerican cultures from as early as 650 BC until after the Spanish conquest in the 16th century.

While European speech scrolls were drawn as if they were an actual unfurled scroll or strip of parchment, Mesoamerican speech scrolls are merely scroll-shaped, looking much like a question mark.

Pre-Columbian Mesoamerica

Speech scrolls are found throughout Mesoamerica. One of the earliest examples of a Mesoamerican speech scroll was found on an Olmec ceramic cylinder seal dated to approximately 650 BC. Here two lines issue from a bird's mouth followed by glyphs proposed to be "3 Ajaw," a ruler's name.

The murals of the Classic era site of Teotihuacan are filled with speech scrolls, in particular the lively (and unexplained) tableaus found within the Tepantitla compound -- this mural, for example, shows no fewer than 20 speech scrolls.