Illuminated Manuscripts

Her son Charles, the poet, inherited her tastes, and added to her collections. We are not surprised, therefore, to find her grandson Louis, afterwards Louis XII., supporting the great artistic movement which he and his Queen Anne of Brittany helped so effectually to identify with the Court of France.

About the time that we hear the last of Fouquet we have the earliest notices of another illuminator who plays an important part in the illuminations executed for Anne of Brittany, the noble and gifted Queen of France, and wife, first of Charles VIII. and then of his successor, Louis XII.

In 1472 Jean Perréal is entrusted with the glass paintings of the Carmelite church at Tours. Lemaire, in his Légende des Vénitiens, calls him a second Zeuxis or Apelles. During the reigns of Charles VIII. and Louis XII. he is the chief artist of the time: In 1491, and perhaps earlier, he is engaged in the usual duties of a valet de chambre, i.e. designing and preparing the requisite devises, arms, and banners for public functions. In 1502 he went to Italy. In 1509 his name occurs in connection with that of Jean Bourdichon, of whom we shall hear more when we come to the work done for the Queen. In 1523 in the household of Francis I. he is still valet de chambre. Twenty-four years previously it was as valet de chambre that he prepared the decorations for Louis XII.'s entry into Lyons. On the death of Anne of Brittany also he performed similar duties, and again on that of Louis XII. He even came to England in 1514, sent by Louis XII., to superintend the trousseau of Mary Tudor, “pour aider à dresser le dict appareil à la mode de France,” previous to her wedding journey to Paris.[57] Four months afterwards he was summoned to direct the funeral obsequies of Louis himself. No illuminated work can be really identified as the work of Perréal, but Mrs. Patteson (Lady Dilke) strongly urges the probability that he painted the Bible Historiée of Corpus Christi College, Cambridge, bequeathed by General Oglethorpe.[58] She considers it quite the sort of work that would grow out of that of Fouquet, and dwells upon the fact of his official duties as valet de chambre giving him just that minute facility in the decoration of armour and furniture in the miniatures which the MS. displays. Whether this be so or not, it is certain that the Bible Historiée is a fine example of the school of Tours.

Another court painter and valet de chambre to Louis XI. and his successors was Jean Bourdichon, an artist born at Tours in 1457, and therefore as a youth probably one of the scholars in the atelier of Jean Fouquet. He is first noticed in the accounts in or about 1478: “A Jehan Bourdichon, paintre, la somme de vingt liures dix sept solz ung denier tournois pour avoir paint le tabernacle fait pour la chapelle du Plessis du Pare, de fin or et d'azur.”[59] Later on, after naming the painting of a statute of St. Martin, for which he received twenty golden crowns, is a note of his painting a MS., which we translate: “To the said Bourdichon for having had written a book in parchment named the Papalist—the same illuminated in gold and azure and made in the same 19 rich histories (miniatures) and for getting it bound and covered, thirty crowns of gold. For this by virtue of the said order of the King and by quittance of the abovenamed written the 5th April One thousand four hundred and eighty (milcccciiii^xx) after Easter, here rendered the sum of £19 1. 8.”

Another quittance shows him to have been employed on the decorations of the château of Plessis les Tours. We may easily see how it is that these artists, when they came to illuminate the books entrusted to them, had such special knowledge of embroideries and decoration of armour when we read in the accounts how they were constantly employed in designing dresses for weddings, tournaments, and funeral obsequies, and making “patterns for the dress and equipment of war.”

A notice in 1508 tells us that Anne of Brittany made an order of payment to Bourdichon of 1,050 livres tournois for having “richly and sumptuously historiated and illuminated a great Book of Hours for our use and service to which he has given and employed much time, and also on behalf of other services which he has rendered hitherto.” This refers to the celebrated “Hours of Anne of Brittany,” now in the National Library at Paris.

This volume, peerless of its kind, has been reproduced in colour lithography by Curmer of Paris—the result, however, is disappointing from the flat and faded look of the prints as compared with the brilliancy of the original pages. The MS. is an invaluable monument of French Renaissance illumination. It is French of Touraine rather than of Paris, yet bearing traces in its flowers and fruit borders of Flemish modes of ornament. It has also reminiscences of Italian painting. But the French neatness and restraint from over-decoration have kept it in a manner unique. It has not quite the softness of Italian, and is far from the intensity of Flemish. Indeed, its fault, if it be faulty, is in its want of force. With the exception of Anne's own portrait given with her patrons, St. Anne, St. Helena, and St. Ursula. The Queen's gown is of brown gold brocade trimmed with dark brown fur. Her hair is brown, like the fur. She wears a necklace of gems set in gold. On her head is a black hood edged with gold and jewels, beneath which and next her face is a border of crimped white muslin, She has brown eyes and finely pencilled eyebrows. As to nose and mouth, she and the two younger saints are pretty much alike. With the allowance of blue for black, St. Anne wears the dress of a Benedictine abbess. A dark crimson cloth covers a table before which the Queen is kneeling, and on which lies open a finely illuminated Service-book. The Calendar which follows this portrait is for each month enclosed in a margin of ornament. To the outer margin of every other page of the book is placed a broad tablet or pilaster containing flowers, fruits, insects, etc., from five to six inches high, each having the Latin name of the plant, etc., at top in red, and the French one in red or blue at the bottom. These names may have been put in later. It must be admitted that the fruits, flowers, and insects are painted with the greatest care and neatness, though sometimes a little assisted by the imagination of the painter. The text and initials are rather heavy and commonplace. Now and then a border surrounds the text completely, where flowers or fruits are scattered—somewhat recklessly at times, but usually with good design—over a ground of plain gold, on which the branches, etc., cast heavy shadows. This part of the design is certainly Flemish. Where “histories” occur the border is a plain brown gilt frame within a black border. Undoubtedly the “Hours of Anne of Brittany” is a very precious volume. The figure subjects are of various degrees of excellence. The four evangelists are vivid, and recall the portraits of Ghirlandaio, and it is to Italy also that the illuminator is indebted for his architectural and sculptural details. Yet Bourdichon is inferior to Fouquet in colouring, as the latter is to the Italians in design and composition. Perhaps he is most successful in his flowers and insects. “Nothing,” said Muntz, “is less like the elegant foliages of Ghirlandaio and Attavante, and nothing is more worthy of being put in comparison with them.”[60]

An illuminator of the name of Jehan Poyet is said to have assisted in the “Hours,” thus while Bourdichon painted the miniatures, Poyet put in the flowers and fruit, etc.; but this share of work is by some believed to belong to a smaller Book of Hours executed for the Queen. Flowers and fruit are said to have been Poyet's speciality, and it is quite possible that he may have had the painting of the borders of the “Grandes Heures,” while Bourdichon did the rest. The writer of the MS. was another native of Tours, named Jehan Riveron. During the reign of Francis I. the school of Tours was removed to Paris because the Court had settled there. Louis XII. had died in the Hôtel des Tournelles, and Francis, though full of plans for plaisances elsewhere, lived mostly in Paris. Fontainebleau is the dream of the near future. Il Rosso, the Italian architect, painter, poet, and musician, was busy there amid a crowd of other artists from Florence and Rome—the refuse of a once brilliant sodality. It was the frivolous, pretty, graceful side of Italian art that came northward in that great migration—the graver and more dignified elements were left behind. To see what Italian art became in France, we have only to enter the Grand Gallery at Fontainebleau, and we see it at its best in architecture, sculpture, and painting. And we cannot help admiring it, for it is amazingly beautiful. Yet it is not Italian—the Italian of the Medici and Farnese palaces. Il Rosso was neither a Michelangelo nor a Carracci; but he set a fashion. He changed the face of art for France. Nor was it in painting and sculpture only. The Italian passion for devises, anagrams, emblems, and mottoes became the rage in Paris. It first came in with the return of Charles VIII. from his Neapolitan campaign. Louis XII. adopted the hedgehog or porcupine, with the motto “Cominus et eminus.” His Queen Claude's motto was “Candida candidis.” The Princess Marguerite's emblem was a marigold or heliotrope; others assigned her the daisy. Her motto: “Non inferiora secutus.” The well-known emblem of Francis was a salamander—why, is a mystery—with the motto, “Nutrisco et extinguo.” All this entered into the taste of the illuminator, and elegant cartouche frames—probably of Dutch origin, as we see in the old map-books of Ortelius Cluverius and Bleau, imported by Ortelius and his friends into Italy, and made use of by Clovio, and thence transferred to France—were made into border-frames for miniatures, varied with altar-forms, doorways, and other fanciful frameworks from the new architecture decorated with flowers, ribbons, panels, mottoes. Another new thing, too, no doubt afforded plenty of suggestion to the illuminator. This was stained glass. Jean Cousin was in his glory in glass-painting; Robert Pinagrier also. But it was Cousin who adopted the new Italian ideas, and whose works were models for the illuminator. In the backgrounds and details of his glass-paintings at Sens, Fleurigny, Paris, and elsewhere, we may trace his progress; and an excellent model, too, was Jean Cousin. He has other claims to remembrance in sculpture, engraving, authorship, but it is as the glass-painter that his influence is seen in illumination. Indeed, Mr. A.F. Didot strongly urged the probability that Cousin was himself the illuminator of the splendid Breviary or Hours of Claude Gouffier.[61] The drawing is in his best manner, the frame-border of caryatides in camaieu is of a richness of ornamentation in keeping with the rest of the volume. The arms and motto of Gouffier are painted in it. It is objected that Cousin's name does not appear in the Gouffier account-books, while those of other artists are given. But only a portion of the accounts is extant. Cousin may, perhaps, only have designed the book, and the other miniaturists carried out his designs. At any rate, the accounts give us the names of three miniaturists which we may here record—Jean Lemaire, of Paris (1555), Charles Jourdain, and Geoffroy Ballin (1359). These “enlumineurs” are stated to have decorated two Books of Hours for Gouffier's wedding. As a good example of the style employed in the decoration of title-pages, we may quote the chimney-piece of the Château d'Anet, executed for Diane de Poitiers, where a sculptured marble frame surrounds a painted landscape. Many of the books of the time of Francis I. and Henry II. are ornamented in this style.

In the British Museum are several fine MSS. illustrative of this period of French illumination, viz. Add. 18853, 18854, and 18855. These three MSS. formed part of the purchase which included the Bedford Offices. 18853 is a Book of Offices executed apparently for Francis I. In some of the borders is a large F with the Cordelière of the third Order of St. Francis and a rayed crown, and on folio 97 v. a large monogram consisting of the letter F, with two crossed sceptres and palm branches, surmounted by the crown-royal of France.

Nothing is known of the history of the MS. from 1547 to 1723, when it was in possession of the Regent Philippe d'Orleans. Possibly it had remained as an heirloom in the family. Philippe gave it to his natural son the Abbé Rothelin, a great lover of rare books and a noted collector, at whose death it was bought by Gaignat, another collector, who sold it to the Duc de la Vallière, and so, step by step, it came at length to Sir John Tobin, of Liverpool, and thence to the British Museum.

The partly sculpturesque character of the border-frames are of the kind just referred to, with festoons and garlands of flowers, and drapery, monograms, and emblems in full rich colours; the architecture and other ornaments sometimes finished with pencillings of gold. The miniatures are of excellent design and colour, finely modelled, and quite in the manner of the paintings of Fontainebleau. The text is a combination of Jarry-like Roman with italic. It may be compared with 18854, similar in some respects, but the smaller miniatures and the frames look more like the older school of Tours. This MS. is also a Book of Offices, and was written for François de Dinteville, Bishop of Auxerre, in 1525, as appears from an inscription in gold letters on fol. 26 v.

18855, folio, is a Book of Offices written in a Gothic text. The miniatures are large full-page paintings within architectural frames or porches, with coloured pillars or pilasters with panels of rich blue, covered with golden traceries, bronze gold pendants at side,—occasional borders as in the “Hours of Anne of Brittany.” The work is of the older school of Tours, but loaded with ornamental details from North Italian pilaster-work. Among the best miniatures are the Nativity (34 v.), the Adoration of the Magi (42 v.), and the Bathsheba. The last perhaps a little too open a scene for a lady's bathroom, but placed within a most gorgeous architectural window or doorway (fol. 62 v). Compare also Harl. 5925, No. 574, for a title-page of French Renaissance style from a printed book, which suggests Venice as the source of the style of 18853.

It is scarcely worth while to carry the subject further. What is done later than Francis II. does not grow finer or better: it only becomes more overloaded with ornament, too much gold, too much richness. Even foliages are often variegated like pearls, or change gradually from colour to colour on the same sweep of acanthus as in a MS. in the British Museum attributed to Pierre Mignard (“Sol Gallicus,” Add. 23745). Compare also the “Heures de Louis XIV.” Now and then an exceptional work, like that of D'Eaubonne at Rouen, belongs to no particular school.

CHAPTER X

So early as the time of Isidore of Seville we find notices of libraries, copyists, and the like (see book iv. of his Encyclopædia), and an able writer of the last century, Don José Maria de Eguren, published a work on the MS. rarities of Spain.[62] The most important of the miniatures in the famous Codex Vigilano are also reproduced in “El Museo Español de antiguedades,” most interesting respecting the calligraphy and miniature art of the eleventh century.

One of the earliest instances of royal patronage bestowed on painting in Spain is a document in the Royal Library at Madrid, containing the expenses of King Sanchez IV. in 1291-2. Thus “to Rodrigo Esteban, painter of the king for many paintings done by the king's orders in the bishop's palace 100 golden maravedis.” Again, in the archives at Barcelona we find that Juan Cesilles, painter of history, was engaged 16th March, 1382, to paint the “History of the twelve apostles for the grand altar of the Church at Reps for 330 florins.” In 1339 one Gonzalez Ferran had some reputation both as a wood engraver and a painter. He was probably a miniaturist. In 1340-81, Garcia Martinez, a Spanish illuminator, worked at Avignon. A copy of the Decretals, dated 1381, in the Cathedral Library of Seville is by his hand.

In the fifteenth century we have many notices of painters, especially in Toledo, whither the taste was in all likelihood brought from Naples after the conquest of that kingdom by Alphonso V. of Aragon in 1441.

It has been observed by those familiar with native Spanish art that its chief characteristic is that it is gloomy. This may be so, but it is not fairly chargeable to the artists but to the tyranny of the Spanish Inquisidor, who laid the embargo on the illuminator that he should not follow the wicked gaiety of the Italians, nor the sometimes too realistic veracity of the Flemings. This accounts usually for backgrounds of black where the Fleming would have had rich colour or gold for the prevalence of black in the draperies and for the sombre tone in general of Spanish painting. It is not always in evidence, as may be seen in many of the miniatures of the famous choir-books in the Escorial. The sombre period began under Ferdinand the Catholic, and it has left its mark on the schools of the fifteenth century. The sixteenth began a new era, and under Philip II. several, both Netherlandish and Italian, miniaturists were invited to assist in the production of the enormous choir-books ordered by the King for San Lorenzo of the Escorial, between 1572 and 1589. The volumes are bound in wooden boards covered with leather, stamped and bossed with ornaments of gilded bronze. It is said that 5,500 lbs. of bronze and 40 lbs. of pure gold were used in the bindings. The actual dimensions of the volumes are 115 by 84 centimetres. Every volume has at least seventy folios, and every folio is splendidly illuminated, thus affording more than 30,000 pages covered with richly ornamented initials, miniatures, and borders. The illuminators and copyists of these choir-books were Cristobal Ramirez, who planned the work, fixed the size and other details of the volumes and the character of the handwriting, Fray Andrés de Leon, Fray Julian de Fuente del Saz, Ambrosio Salazar, Fray Martin de Palencia, Francisco Hernandez, Pedro Salavarte, and Pedro Gomez. Ramirez was engaged at the Escorial from 1566 to 1572. In the latter year he presented a Breviary with musical notation to the King, and was then engaged for the great undertaking mentioned above.

Andrés Cristobal was also an illuminator of note at Seville, where he worked from 1555 to 1559. Andrés de Leon worked at the Escorial from 1568, and is especially mentioned by Los Santos in his well-known description of the monastery of San Lorenzo: “Son de gran numero y excelencia las iluminaciones que tienen de mano nuestro Fray Andrés de Leon, que fue otro Don Julio en el Arte.”[63] The allusion is to the celebrated Don Giulio Clovio, then in the height of his fame in Italy. Fray Julian received similar praise for a capitolario for the principal festivals of the year, especially for the grand dimensions of the miniatures, the like of which the writer says had never been seen before, either in Spain or Italy. Andrés de Leon died at the Escorial in 1580. Salazar continued working on them till they were completed, and in 1590 went to Toledo, where he finished two Missals for the Cathedral, which had been begun by the famous Juan Martinez de los Corrales. He was still engaged on similar work until his death in 1604. Two other illuminators, Esteban and Julian de Salazar, were working at the Escorial in 1585. Bermudez[64] mentions Fray Martin de Palencia as having executed a volume in a fine handwriting and with beautiful miniatures for the monastery of Saso. Thus we see there were numerous miniaturists in Spain in the latest years of the existence of the art that had been imported chiefly from Italy.

After most of these great choir-books had been finished there were still others in progress. In 1583 Giovanni Battista Scorza of Genoa, who is celebrated in the “Galleria” of the Cavaliero Marini, was invited by the King to take part in his great choir-book scheme. Scorza was then thirty-six years of age, and in the height of his reputation as a painter of small animals and insects. After a little time he returned to Genoa, where he lived to be ninety years old. He had a brother, Sinibaldo, who was equally skilful in miniature, and especially in scenes from history. The Scorzas were pupils of Luca Cambiaso. It may be noticed that all this work in miniature, although so late in its own history, is accomplished before the greatest names in Spanish painting are known. Josefo Ribera was born in 1588; Zurbaran in 1598; Velasquez in 1599; Alonzo Cano in 1601; Murillo in 1617. This, in a sense, is the natural course of things, as, generally, illumination has preceded the other kinds of painting.

With regard to Portugal, very little is recorded that does not in some way connect itself with Spain. So we find that Antonio and Francesco de Holanda, seemingly of Netherlandish origin, are mentioned in relation to the books illuminated for the Royal Monastery of Thomar; Francesco also worked for the monastery of Belem. Francesco de Holanda was a great admirer and imitator of Clovio, but he always insisted that his father Antonio was the inventor of the method of “stippling,” as the finishing with minute points of colour is technically called, which was brought to such perfection by Clovio and his scholars and imitators.

In the fourteenth century the Cancioniero of Don Pedro Affonso Ct. de Barcellos affords an example of the calligraphy (for which Spain and Portugal have always been famous) and illumination which is precious for the student. It is still in existence in the Palace of Ajuda. Its date is 1320-40. And there are MSS. in the Torre do Tombo of Lisbon that are richly illuminated. Again, in Seville there is the “Juego de las Tablas,” executed under Alphonso the Wise in 1283, with its Gothic arcades and ornaments. M. Joaquin de Vasconcellas has made a study of this MS. The miniatures of the Torre do Tombo of the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries are mostly of the French school.

Among all the calligraphic monuments of Portugal it is claimed that the most splendid is the “Bible of the Hieronymites.” (See Revista universal Lisbonense, 1848, pp. 24-8.) This work, it is said, was a present from the Court of Rome to Emanuel, successor of John II., in remembrance of the homage made to the Holy See, of the first gold brought from the Indies, but the story is very doubtful. The King, in bequeathing the seven volumes to the convent of Belem, says nothing about such an origin. They are manifestly in great part the work of foreign artists. One well-known miniaturist, Antonio de Holanda, the father of the better-known Francesco, took part in the work, and having a good conceit of his own abilities (we shall probably hear of him again), reserved an entire volume to himself in order to give proof of them. The seven volumes which then were covered with crimson velvet and silver bosses and enamels, are now simply bound in red morocco. In the middle of each cover are the arms of Emanuel King of Portugal. Vols. v. and vii. have those of Dona Isabel, his Spanish wife.

The initials and ornaments show that the art of Italy is freely mixed with that of Portugal. Indeed, from the signatures in the volumes it is seen that the work of the penman was Italian; vol. i. being written at Ferrara by Sigismundo de Sigismundis, the well-known Italian calligrapher, in 1495. The second volume, also finished in 1495, bears the name of Alessandro Verazzano, another famous copyist, who wrote several of the volumes illuminated by Attavante. Vol. iii. is dated 1496, and is unsigned. The next three volumes are also without signature. Vol. vii. is the work of Antonio de Holanda, who from his name appears to have been of Dutch descent. His work is certainly excellent, and renders this volume a very precious monument of the art of Portugal. He was the official herald of the King, and he and his son Francesco gave their whole time to the practice of illumination. His son's Memoirs give a most interesting account of his travels and intercourse with Giulio Clovio and the other Italian artists whom he met with in Rome.[65] For some years the Hieronymite Bible was in Paris, having been brought thither by Marshal Junot, where it remained unnoticed for several years. Being called for by the Portuguese Government, Louis XVIII. paid 50,000 francs to the family of Junot, and restored it to the monastery of Belem. A splendidly illuminated atlas by an illuminator and cartographer named Fernando Vas Dourado was published in the year of his death, 1571.

As an important example of what we may fairly call native art, we will now briefly refer to the celebrated Missal of Estevam Gonçalvez Neto, one of the productions of the busy second half of the sixteenth century. The clever amateur who achieved this beautiful series of paintings, for paintings they are, in addition to the writing and other ornamentation of the MS., was descended from a noble family of Sêrem, in the parish of Macinhata, forty-three leagues from Lisbon. He became Canon of Viseu, and during his leisure, after this appointment, executed the Pontifical Missal which bears his name. It is dedicated to Don Josè Manuel, of the House of Tancos, Bishop of Viseu, afterwards of Coimbra, and lastly Archbishop of Lisbon. This prelate gave the book to the Church of Viseu. The original MS. was afterwards in the library of the Convent of Jesus, and is now in the Academy of Sciences at Lisbon. Stephen Gonsalvez died July 29th, 1627. The Missal is signed: “Steph. Glz. Abbas Sereicencis fac. 1610.” It has been very well reproduced in colours by Macia, of Paris.

The work consists of eleven large folio sheets separately mounted and measuring eighteen by ten inches. It commences with a prologue, with the arms of Portugal supported by two savages, having clubs and shields. Outside the inner frame are three scenes: (1) wild animals in combat; (2) a sea-nymph being rescued; (3) a fight among sylvan savages. Next comes a series of portraits painted in the most finished and life-like style, beginning with Dom Garcia F° del rey Abarca and Dona Constancia on a fruitful tree with foliage, fruits, and birds, a cat, and other things. The tree is an oak, beside it are apple and cherry trees. On the oak are green acorns. The birds are very beautiful, the cat simply perfect. These details recall the highly finished and lovely work of Georg Hoefnagel on the great Missal at Vienna. Gothic brown-gold architecture and three battle scenes complete the page.

The last MS. to be mentioned in this hasty sketch is one in the British Museum (Stowe 597). It is a “Missale Romanum,” and is said to have been illuminated for John III. in 1557. It was once the property of the Abbé Gamier, chaplain for near thirty years, of the French factory at Lisbon. The binding is red morocco, and once had silver clasps.

Here and there are exquisite little drawings of ecclesiastical utensils, etc., but the everlasting variety among the quaint and fanciful initials provides an unwearying fund of interest. Tiny birds of the loveliest plumage sit among and beneath the limbs of the letters, or elegant scrolls of pencilled gold cover the little coloured panels on which the plain gold Roman initials are placed. Some of the larger initials are very finely executed and contain full-length figures of saints, bishops, or queens. One lovely initial B has a graceful girl simply clad in blue tunic and pale yellow skirt with a silken coil of pale rose forming the upper loop of the letter, the lower being formed of the curved body of a green dragon. Her left hand lifts the silk-work, her right, hanging by her side, holds a little golden pitcher. The whole is painted on a panel of bright gold. Another (L) shows a peasant rushing laughingly, with a hare slung over his shoulder, past the figure of a guardian terminus of bronze. But the Missal should be seen to be properly understood, for though in a general way it has a look of Italian influence, its originality is beyond question.

CHAPTER XI

The art of printing, as the reading world has been frequently informed, was invented in the fifteenth century, and undoubtedly had, to a considerable extent, a destructive effect upon the craft of professional copyists. But in the fifteenth century the art of the writer and that of the illuminator had long been separate professions. There was no particular reason, therefore, why the invention of printing should interfere with the illuminator. As a matter of fact, it made little difference. Nor, indeed, did printing entirely put a stop to the professional career of the scribe. It was prophesied, before practical experience of facts proved the contrary, that the invention of the railway engine would abolish the horse. The printing-press did not abolish the penman, but it certainly spoiled his trade. We have seen in the course of the preceding chapters that it did not spoil the trade of the illuminator. Nor was it quite owing to the fact that many printed books were so adorned as to appear like illuminated MSS. More than one wealthy patron absolutely declined to have anything to do with printed books. The matter was too vulgar and too cheap. The last Duke of Urbino was a prince of this lofty way of thinking, and scarcely a court in Europe but continued to have MSS. produced as if no such thing as the printing-press were known. How they were multiplied in Spain and France we have seen in detail. We will now proceed to take a farewell look at the German and Italian libraries, in order to see how the illustrious presses of Mainz, Strassburg, Augsburg, Köln, Munich, Vienna, Venice, Milan, Florence, and Rome affected the ateliers of the great schools of illumination established in most of these cities. What do we find? In point of fact, some of the richest, most magnificent books ever produced by the illuminator, not only whilst the press was still a novelty, but long after it had become perfectly familiar to everybody. For several of the cities aforesaid we have the means of proof: thus for Mainz, at the end of the superb copy of the Mazarine Bible, now at Paris, is the following inscription: “Iste liber illuminatus, legatus and completus est henricum Cremer vicariū ecclesie collegiate Sancti Stephani Moguntini sub anno dni Melesimo quatring entesimo quinquagesimo Sexto, festo assumptiois gloriose Virginis Marie. Deo gratias alleluya.” This was in 1456, the year before the first press was set up. In 1524 we have two most splendidly illuminated MSS.—a Missal and a Prayer-book—executed by order of Albert of Brandenburg, Archbishop of Mainz. Two richer examples of the German Renaissance cannot easily be imagined. We cannot dilate upon them. We may, however, truly say that together with very many other examples of illuminated work, both in manuscripts and printed books, they show the art of the illuminator to be no less splendid or elaborate after the invention of printing than it was before.

Augsburg was producing illuminated Service-books ten years after Günther Zainer had set up the press in that city.

There seems, however, no reason why the artistic skill and elaborate methods of reproduction of the present day should not produce magnificent books—indeed the “Imitation” of Thomas à Kempis, and other continental examples prove that this is amply possible.

MANUSCRIPTS THAT MAY BE CONSULTED AS EXAMPLES